Brother ADS-1700W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother ADS-1700W	50 IPM	600 dpi	Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, Micro USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	3.7 lb. (1.67 kg)	Click for more info

The Brother ADS-1700 is a portable scanner with a USB port and a fast one: it uses a Micro USB 3.0 (Not USB-C) and it has real USB 3.0 transfer speeds. It also has backward compatibility with all USB ports. You can connect it via USB port and micro USB cable to your Windows PC or Mac or you can connect it to your local network via the integrated Wifi 802.11 b/g/n. In duplex scanning mode, the scan speed of this portable sheetfed document scanner is up to 50 images per minute.

It has a Dual CIS sensor integrated so you can scan duplex documents with a single pass of the paper. The CIS (Contact image sensors) sensors have a pixel density of 600 dots per inch which means that you can go into fine details in the JPEG or Bitmap scanned images on your computer monitor. Text looks great at 600 dpi but it’s also a matter of being practical because the file size of a 600dpi scan is almost 4 times larger than one at 300 dpi. Luckily the USB port is fast and can keep up. One of the great features is the 2.8″ touchscreen color LCD display which you will not find on other portable color duplex document scanners that helps you set up things like scan settings, where should it be saving scanned documents. You can find LCD screens but without the touch screen functionality on devices like the VuPoint solutions magic wand portable scanner but not as big as this.

It can function by itself without any Mac and PC device connected to it because you can plug a flash drive in its usb port and scan directly onto it. Other scanners like the Doxie Go support internal memory cards in the form of SD Cards.

It being an A4 scanner, you can basically scan any document with a paper size of up to A4 and even if it’s a longer document up to 34 inches long. This device comes with an automatic document feeder ADF tray which you can use to scan documents automatically, you don’t have to manually feed each sheet of paper. It has TWAIN, WIA, ICA and SANE drivers and so you can use it with many scanning apps that support one of those standard. Brother states that this scanner accepts the following types of paper: Paper thickness : Plain Paper, Thin Paper, Thick Paper, Thicker Paper, Recycled Paper, Business Card, Plastic Card. This scanner can be easily used as a business card scanner

The downside is that this portable USB scanner doesn’t send scanned images to your favorite cloud storage through the wireless connection. What you have to do is install the Brother software on the computer and use that software as a bridge to upload the digital images to DropBox, Evernote or Google Drive.

There are plenty of image correction features to improve the scan quality on this Brother wireless scanner like automatic cropping, automatic deskew, punch hole removal and automatic color mode detection. This portable scanner also comes with OCR software. The software includes: Nuance PaperPort SE with OCR for Windows, Brother iPrint&Scan, Power PDF. In our tests, the Nuance OCR software came behind the one that ABBYY makes, but it is still a solid choice.

This portable USB scanner doesn’t have a rechargeable battery. You can power it either via an AC adapter or it can be USB powered via USB cable. There is also a new line of Brother DSMobile scanners that you maybe want to check out.

Epson DS-320

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Epson DS-320	50 IPM	600 dpi	SuperSpeed USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	2.4 lb. (1 kg)	Click for more info

The Epson DS-320 is another great portable scanner with USB port. It uses a true SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port. The integrated USB is not a Micro USB nor a USB Type-C, it is a similar port to the one you find on other computer peripheral devices such as external USB drives from WD. Worth noting that the USB doesn’t power the device, there is a separate cable for that. The maximum bandwith data transfer rate is 5gbps or 640 Megabytes in real-world speed. It is ten times as fast as the previous USB 2.0. It also has fast scanning speeds. This mobile color page scanner can easily scan 25 pages per minute.

This is also a duplex portable USB scanner and is able to scan both sides of a double-sided document with a single pass. The integrated CIS sensor will provide you with a 600 dpi optical resolution, good enough for even the most detailed photos and great Optical Character Recognition accuracy. All documents that are up to A4 size can be scanned with the device.

You can run a wide range of paper types through this portable scanner from 50 gsm to 230 gsm which includes business cards and plastic cards or ID cards. You can also use it as a receipt scanner and run very thin receipts through the feeder. It has TWAIN and ISIS drivers which should be compatible with most scanning apps on the market.

This portable USB scanner also comes with an ADF tray, so you can stack up several documents and the scanner will scan them automatically. It also comes with several ICE image correction features out of the box which should reduce or eliminate the use of a photo editing software after scanning: Automatic Color detection, image rotation, cropping and background removal.

This is possible using the software bundle that they provide: Epson Scan, Document Capture Software, NewSoft Presto! BizCard, OpenText ISIS. This bundle includes OCR software. You can use the Epson ScanSmart software to organize your scanned images. This is a document scanner for Mac and PC and you can use the scanning software on both just as well. This Epson scanner is quite a lightweight design at just 2.4 lbs in weight. This is the most compact and lightweight device of the three listed here.

Please note that this is NOT a scanner with rechargeable battery. You need to connect it to a power source if you want to use it. Epson also makes the epson workforce ds-40 wireless portable scanner. If you need a photo scanning version, the epson fastfoto ff-680w wireless pro photo scanner is a photo scanning device with an automatic document feeder and probably the best you can find for scanning photos quickly. And if flatbed is your thing and you want to stick to the Epson brand, the Epson Perfection V600 is our favorite scanner.

Brother ADS-1250W

Product	Images / Minute	Resolution	Connectivity	Duplex Scanning	ADF Tray	Weight	Price
Brother ADS-1250W	50 IPM	600 dpi	Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, Micro USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	3.7 lb. (1.67 kg)	Click for more info

The Brother ADS-1250W is the last portable scanner with USB port that we will review here. It has basically the same connectivity features as the Brother ADS-1700W, so it has Wireless 802.11 b/g/n connectivity. There is also compatibility with USB 3.0. It’s great to use USB on-the-go but so is wi-fi, which you can use with wifi direct so you don’t need a hotspot. The main problem with USB is that you can’t share any desktop scanner with multiple computers. You can go to the extent to buy a USB Hub with a switch but it would not be a very elegant solution. One cool thing with this scanner is that you can copy the digital files to flash drives that you can hook up straight into the USB port. The USB port is neither a mini usb nor a micro usb, it is a proprietary cable similar to those used on external drives.

It uses the same type of auto document feeder with a capacity of 20 documents and also doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, so you need to always plug in the power cable cord to use it.

This portable USB Scanner has the same image resolution and features as the ADS-1700. What sets that and this particular scanner model apart is that the ADS-1700 has an LCD screen and which makes it a more intuitive portable scanner and a slightly larger RGB color depth. The file formats that both scanners can export are the same: BMP, JPEG, Multi-Page PDF, Multi-Page TIFF, PDF, PNG, TIFF. So you can expect more or less the same image quality for the scanned documents and images and all the Image correction features like: automatic rotation, color detection and deskew. They both have the same Nuance OCR software too.

With a 600 dpi optical resolution, this sheetfed scanner can be a great photo scanner. We recommend that you use 400 dpi for document scanning if you want to convert to searchable PDFs and 600 dpi for photo scanning. This is a handheld portable document scanner for PC and Mac (Any Mac from Macbook Air to iMac) with TWAIN, SANE, ICA and WIA drivers for this specific image scanner are available for download on Brother’s website. You can also transfer the files to an iPhone or iPad, Android and Google Chromebook. One feature that is missing from many wireless portable document scanners made by big manufacturers is that they cannot save to SD Card like the VuPoint magic wand portable scanner. Smaller manufacturers have had no problem implementing that in cheaper scanners. If these scanners don’t fit your budget, Brother Mobile also makes the Brother ds-620 mobile.

Which is the right portable scanner with USB for me?

We think the best option would be the Brother ADS-1700. It is a solid performer, has really fast USB connectivity, has proven to be a reliable scanner in time and customers have reported high satisfaction rates after 6 months of usage.


Some mobile USB document scanners did not make our list: canon imageformula p-215ii, doxie go se wifi with its “amazing software”, epson workforce es-300ws, epson workforce ds-40, epson workforce es-50, flippal mobile scanner, epson workforce es-60w wireless portable scanner, fujitsu scansnap s1300i portable color duplex scanner, scansnap ix100, vupoint solutions magic wand portable handheld wand wireless scanner with autofeed docking station, Xerox Duplex Combo, msrm iscan wand, visioneer roadwarrior 4d.

What great desktop scanner with USB ports can you buy? The Canon Imageformula r40 office document scanner is a great low-cost option that was launched in 2019. Good connectivity, speed and price (Alternatively there is the canon imageformula dr-c225 ii office). The fujitsu scansnap ix1500 color duplex document scanner is one of the best standalone scanners you can buy, it doesn’t need a computer to operate all the time and it scans and saves the documents directly to the cloud. The HP scanjet pro 2500 f1 which is a hybrid flatbed document scanner and the more expensive Scanjet enterprise line.

Of course, if you just need to scan to USB, but don’t need to go portable, you can just use an all-in-one inkjet printer or laser printer like the HP Officejet Pro color laser printers which will gladly store your files on a USB drive or send them to your computer but will perform very slow and with limited features.

We also reviewed flatbed scanners. If you are interested in flatbed scanners, we covered the Canon Canoscan Lide scanners like the Canon Canoscan Lide 400 color photo scanner with USB-c port. Check out our website for more details and related products.