DS-820W
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Brother products have been changing the way people work, and play, for years. Our reliable, high-quality, feature-rich printers, scanners, labelers, and more are hard at work in homes everywhere. Whatever your need, Brother products are always "At your side."
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A Regular Joe on Amazon
9 years ago
12/30/2013, 00:33 AM
Good, truly portable, scanner for simple tasks
As others have said, this is not a duplex scanner, and it has to be hand fed. To scan receipts and orders while away from the office, it works fine an the image quality is clear. It is very compact and wireless which is exactly what we needed. If you are looking for a good solution for simple scanning needs, this is the way to go. If you need a scanner that you can press go and leave it while you work, you will want to look for something else.
Professor H on Amazon
9 years ago
12/20/2013, 00:23 AM
Easy To Setup
This model does not do what is called duplex scanning, or both sides of one page. If not now there will be a time soon when you wish you could scan both sides of a page, picture, map, or note believe me. I use the duplex all the time for scans with my other scanners. I could not recommend the earlier versions of Brother scanners as they just weren't quite there yet in terms of quality of scans and quality of build.
If you like this form factor, this thing is tiny, then get the DS-920DW that does duplex for about twenty bucks more.
The included software is the best ever made for a scanner....wait for it... NOTT. But you will get by.
For serious scanning and not just on the road stuff go for the ADS models like the 1000 and 1500 that are much faster, have document feeders so you don't have to spoon feed each page in trying to keep it straight; 1000 has a 20 page and the ADS 2000 and 3000 have 50 page feeders. Its fun watching those machines eat your pages effortlessly.
This scanner kind of feels like a toy, but for saving space they can't be beat. If you have to space and the budget get the better scanner now instead of later after you bought this one. At the very least get the model up from this.
Arwen in NM on Amazon
9 years ago
12/18/2013, 11:29 AM
Mom's Recipes Are Safe
I really like that this is wireless. I wanted to scan my family recipes but didn't necessarily want to cart the whole file out of the room where it is now. So this made it seamless for me. I just parked next to the box and started scanning.
It's a big help for my decluttering efforts. I can also see using it for my family photos but I just haven't started on that one yet.
It was very easy to set up and I liked the membership to the cloud service. That was convenient.
I had no problems setting this up and using it. All five stars because it does exactly what is says...it's a document scanner. It's wireless. It is compact.
G. Ware Cornell Jr. on Amazon
9 years ago
12/09/2013, 03:07 AM
There are other options to consider before you buy
Portable document scanners are supposed to be handy. Their real competition is against scanning apps like Smile Software's PDFpen Scan +, my current favorite scanning app which promises to "turn your iPad into a flatbed scanner." That is an overstatement by the app-maker because what it really does is apply optical character recognition to pdfs created from the camera of iPad or iPhone. However for may situations that is enough and the need for a foot long one pound scanner is not clear.
The age of iPad has many lawyers shucking their trial bags and hard copy files in favor of showing up at deposition or for a hearing with just an iPad. Taking along an additional piece of equipment to, say copy exhibits offered by an opposing party, almost always requires some sort of bag to lug things in. This scanner weighs as much as my iPad Air, so right off the bat, it doubles the mass required to go to deposition. Add a small nylon laptop case and that's even more to carry.
As to the scanner itself, it isn't really a substitute for the much heavier but much more feature laden scanners like the six poundFujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac (PA03656-B005)Scanner. That scanner, which has an automatic document feeder, duplex scanner (two sides of a document copied at once), and simply astonishing speed. It also has an app allowing the scanner to operate from an iPad app and save directly to iPad. Were I to know ahead of time that I would need to copy hundreds of pages of exhibits, I would not hesitate to bring the larger scanner particularly if I knew I could get it and iPad on the same wireless network.
As to the scanner itself. the scanned images are excellent, and it has a reasonable rated speed of 8 ppm for black and white and color images. However it does not duplex and the documents have to be hand fed. You cannot use it like a flatbed scanner for obvious reasons. The resulting pdfs still need to be run through an OCR app, something the PDFpen Scan + can do. It supports wireless transfer via a free app but I gave up on that, preferring to scan to the 4GB SD card that come with the scanner. The interface itself is poor.
So at the end of the day, this is a nice scanner but it is a product whose inherent limitations should cause you to consider carefully how much actual use it will receive.
Ware Cornell on Amazon
9 years ago
12/09/2013, 02:46 AM
There are other options to consider before you buy
Portable document scanners are supposed to be handy. Their real competition is against scanning apps like Smile Software's PDFpen Scan +, my current favorite scanning app which promises to "turn your iPad into a flatbed scanner." That is an overstatement by the app-maker because what it really does is apply optical character recognition to pdfs created from the camera of iPad or iPhone. However for may situations that is enough and the need for a foot long one pound scanner is not clear.
The age of iPad has many lawyers shucking their trial bags and hard copy files in favor of showing up at deposition or for a hearing with just an iPad. Taking along an additional piece of equipment to, say copy exhibits offered by an opposing party, almost always requires some sort of bag to lug things in. This scanner weighs as much as my iPad Air, so right off the bat, it doubles the mass required to go to deposition. Add a small nylon laptop case and that's even more to carry.
As to the scanner itself, it isn't really a substitute for the much heavier but much more feature laden scanners like the six pound
Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac (PA03656-B005)
Scanner. That scanner, which has an automatic document feeder, duplex scanner (two sides of a document copied at once), and simply astonishing speed. It also has an app allowing the scanner to operate from an iPad app and save directly to iPad. Were I to know ahead of time that I would need to copy hundreds of pages of exhibits, I would not hesitate to bring the larger scanner particularly if I knew I could get it and iPad on the same wireless network.
As to the scanner itself. the scanned images are excellent, and it has a reasonable rated speed of 8 ppm for black and white and color images. However it does not duplex and the documents have to be hand fed. You cannot use it like a flatbed scanner for obvious reasons. The resulting pdfs still need to be run through an OCR app, something the PDFpen Scan + can do. It supports wireless transfer via a free app but I gave up on that, preferring to scan to the 4GB SD card that come with the scanner. The interface itself is poor.
So at the end of the day, this is a nice scanner but it is a product whose inherent limitations should cause you to consider carefully how much actual use it will receive.
Ann on Amazon
10 years ago
11/29/2013, 01:03 AM
very easy to use
The scanner worked right out of the box. It even had pre-charged battery, so I was able to scan my first document in two minutes after opening the box. The scanner can scan documents up to 32 inches long, so it is great for scanning receipts, which was almost impossible with bed scanner I have. There is software included (you have to download it) to keep track of the receipts.
a customer on Amazon
10 years ago
11/28/2013, 11:12 AM
very easy to use
The scanner worked right out of the box. It even had pre-charged battery, so I was able to scan my first document in two minutes after opening the box. The scanner can scan documents up to 32 inches long, so it is great for scanning receipts, which was almost impossible with bed scanner I have. There is software included (you have to download it) to keep track of the receipts.
Gauda on Amazon
10 years ago
11/26/2013, 06:44 AM
Useful and versatile
This is a very compact scanner. It will easily scan standard papers and documents, photographs, business cars, and even ID cards with the carrier sheet. Set up was quite fast, even with my archaic Dell. Being a wireless device allows one to use it with smart phones which adds to the convenience and versatility. This scanner comes with a mini SD card so things can be scanned standalone thanks to the battery and later transferred to a computer or direct to a printer. While plugged into a computer via USB cable it will charge the battery. The on board menu is easy to use if using it in standalone mode. What I didn't really like was the software that's included. It could just be me, but the software wasn't so intuitive and seemed clunky and hard to use. Scanned image quality is pretty good and it feeds rather quickly too. Overall I think this is a useful and versatile device, even if the software is a bit lacking.