NM on Amazon 4 years ago
11/27/2018, 19:17 PM
Decent for Photos
I've spent the past several days scanning hundreds of family photos into a digital archive using this machine. All in all I am fairly satisfied with it and it does the job it is supposed to do. However, some fundamental issues make me wish I had went with a more expensive model.
PROS:
-automatic size detection is perfect. no matter what I feed into it, from ticket stubs to documents to panoramic photos, it always figures it out without issue.
-initial setup is quick and painless. Despite all the bloatware complaints I saw in all the reviews, I was able to quickly install the device setup software and nothing else with no problems.
-although the software is poorly-designed, it is very easy to learn and use it.
-can scan sets of documents either into single JPEGs, single-page PDFs, or multi-page PDFs. The last option is very useful for making manageable archival sets.
-capacity is decent, at up to 60 photos at most.
-paper jams were nonexistent. As long as you're not overloading or putting in unscannable papers, this isn't going to be an issue.
CONS:
-color quality is awful. Tried tweaking all kinds of settings in terms of automated color pickup, brightness, contrast, etc at 300dpi, but every one of my scans came out with extra darkness and washed-out colors.
-the highest setting, 600dpi, is incredibly slow. 300dpi would be acceptable if not for the aforementioned color issues. There are no options between 300dpi and 600dpi.
-Speed of use is a MASSIVE issue. Every time you want to change a setting like color or double vs. single sided, you need to open the software, select your scanner, click "connect", select your scanning mode, choose the setting you want changed from the dropdown menu, save the setting change, then close the software. It's unbelievably time-consuming, to the extent of obviating the speed of the scanner. Making certain settings changeable with a button or single click, autosaving, and/or allowing scanning while the software is opened, would have easily resolved this software usability nightmare. Brother clearly either has no QA team, or cheaped hard on it.
-the automated file naming conventions for the scans are extremely limited. You can set one static name, and have it automatically attach the scan date or a sequential number. That's about it.
-"Scan to USB mode" is incomprehensible and unusable. You're gonna need to just scan to your PC and port to a USB device from there. Problem is, you need an unusual USB3 cable to scan to PC, and...
-Get this: this $275 scanner DOESN'T COME WITH ANY USB CABLES. Seriously? What the %#*# did I just pay for? I had to waste my time hunting for a $3 cable because Brother is too cheap to include one with a machine they just turned a profit of hundreds of dollars off of? I can't operate it straight out of the box without my own equipment? This is unacceptable miserliness and speaks volumes about how little Brother cares about their customers.