Briefly, the scanner was delivered on time, in good condition and works as advertised on my MacBook Pro.
Now, the full review…
Disclaimers: I primarily use this for single page documents; at most, I’ve scanned a 14-page document. I cannot comment on the software beyond the DSmobileCapture that runs the scanner, like the BR-Receipts or Presto!PageManager. because I haven’t needed them yet.
That being said, the scanner is great. It works better than I expected. The Brightness and Contrast can be adjusted to optimize the scans. The multi-page scanning is easy; just toggle the checkbox that says “Multi Page Output”. Under ‘Options’, you can also set the page orientation, for example, allowing you to scan receipts in sideways and have the files be right-side up. That may not sound impressive, but when inserting them sideways helps keep the PDFs nicely squared off, that’s a lot of documents that you WON’T have to go through turning 90° by hand. Lastly, I had been worried about feeding my documents in straight, lest the PDFs come out tilted, but it turns out not to be an issue. The DSmobileCapture software automatically finds and aligns the top edge, even if the page is fed in askew, attempting to square off the PDFs. The only annoyance I have is that you have to manually feed in EACH PAGE, instead of having them in a stack and taken up by the machine one-at-a-time. All in all, the convenience of having a portable scanner and the amount of time I now save compared to my previous scanning methods makes this well worth the money.
It works great and as advertised. One star removed for two small quirks that make using it somewhat awkward. The company can and should fix these items. (1) The placement of the power cord is very poor. Look at it on the pictures. It attaches to the scanner right underneath where your paper comes out, so your paper gets caught in it constantly. I have to sit the scanner on top of the cord to prevent this (and it still does it sometimes). Place the power cord so it attaches at one end or the other and this would be avoided. (2) When you scan one page, the software makes you choose "OK" to scan a second sheet, or "Cancel" to end the scan. These are not words one would normally use, and it is mildly frustrating to try and remember the right one. Just change the words to "Next Page" and "Done" and it would make sense. Otherwise, it works like everyone else here said it does.
Couldn't be happier... kinda.
First off - the scanner itself. The unit arrived carefully packaged and without any damage. I check stuff like that because I know I'll be writing an Amazon review at some point and want to say it. No rattlesnakes in the box. No ticking time bomb. Just a scanner. And those two air pillow thingies that I like to pretend that I'm gonna keep in an upstairs closet and use to ship Christmas presents until I remember that I'm a compulsive procrastinator and end up buying everyone Amazon gift cards and trying to figure out how to use Grandma's "Cross Stitch The Mona Lisa" kit for myself when I find it about mid February.
I bought this scanner for what I hoped would be three purposes: scanning receipts, scanning a boat load of pictures at a moderate quality level so I could get rid of the shoeboxes and managing my daily influx of bills/mail/threats and other stuff that comes in the mail that I used to compulsively hold onto and move around the country with me but would rather scan and trash so I can compulsively carry around a single hard drive full of PDFs of that same stuff that I'll never look at again.
I am happy to report that this scanner nails all three at a reasonable price point, which would have earned it a five star rating. There are a few annoying things (that didn't have to happen) that cost the star. I'll explain, but during the breakdown of each scanning experience.
Receipts: This scanner handles the receipt scanning like a pro. I've set it up at the end of my desk, hovering over the edge and directly above a trash can. I come home at the end of the day and push the receipts in (after a little software interface - more on this later). It scans the receipts and gravity pushes them out into the trash can. The scan settings are perfect for this operation. Color or Black and White anywhere from 200 - 600 DPI. For receipts I am doing color scans (cause who doesn't love color and the file size on color vs BW is negligible) at about 200 DPI. It's honestly overkill but whatever. The scans are so good I'm using my phone on my computer monitor to hit the Walmart smart saver code box ($3.66 so far, RAWR!) after the receipt is long gone.
Pictures: This one is a little tickier. I was hoping for a little bit better native quality without having to fuss with the picture inputs. I've eventually settled off on scanning in a TIF files and then mass converting to JPG. It seems to do a better job for some reason (the native JPG scans look a little wonky with the pictures, but the TIF's look fine). As with the receipts (but more relevant here) the scanner auto feeds. You put one picture in, it scans it and a countdown timer starts on your screen. As long as you get the next picture "grabbed" by the scanner in the next 30-60 seconds (user editable setting) it stores the first picture and scans the next. The scanner comes with a variety of input scan settings (jpg, tiff, pdf, etc) and does the processing work well. I'd rate this function at a B. I would have settled for a C, so I'm happy but if you are buying a scanner JUST for picture scanning I think you could probably do better. As a multi-function, this hit the mark. As a side note, I'm also scanning some lower quality items (recipe cards, clippings, etc) and those come out like a champ at the basic settings (200DPI, color).
So, where is the bad?
The software and a lame money grab by Brother. First up, the software.
A multifunction scanner like this is designed to appeal to the home organization OCD personality. I am one of those. As a result, I am scanning a variety of things trying to clean up my house for the day when Better Homes and Gardens isn't going to come over and take pictures, followed by Lifehacker who nominates me as basket case of the year who can pull a receipt for the original copy of Netscape I bought in 1996 off my hard drive (which I can now do. Call me Lifehacker.) I want each of these files to go to a different place. Current receipts to one folder on my hard drive. Archive receipts to another. Recipes to a third. My family pictures to a fourth. The shoebox full of pictures from my in-laws to a fifth. Etc. This software can do it, but the basic software requires you to click a browse button and navigate your hard drive to change the directory every single time you change. And there is no memory related to a drop down box. At this point I've used all five directories. A drop down box would save a lot of time switching between projects. Or perhaps (if you really wanted to get crazy) a user configurable "What are you scanning now?" pop up when you opened the program. Let me pick out the directories, put a cutsie picture up there and let me do it easy. Don't make me look at "My Documents" and drill down fifteen directories to get to where I want this picture of my wife when she was three and was harassing her father to go. Small thing, but over time it's gotten annoying. So easy to fix.
And I'm sure Brother would have fixed it if they weren't too busy writing their receipt organization program. The one that the CD said I could install - but only after I downloaded it - and the CD bounced me over to the Brother website and made me enter the serial number off the bottom of the scanner. Which I did. And then they asked for ten bucks.
I can only assume that this software that I am supposed to pay ten bucks for will be as user friendly as the one you gave me. You know, the one without the drop down box or folder memory? Or maybe it doesn't have that, but I can go to another website and enter the serial number again and give you ten more bucks? A money grab. An upsell. A digital version of the annoying Best Buy salesman that wants to help you as you walk around the store (along with his fifteen friends) before you go stand in the line at the front of the store for thirty minutes as the one ill-tempered cashier helps everyone. And tries to sell you a warranty.
Good scanner. Gets the job done. Slimy upsell effort and mediocre software. The three star to Brother is brought up by the solid hardware of the scanner itself. Four stars.
EDIT: The button scanning is cool, but if you use it (insert the document, let the scanner grab it, press the button) it pulls the document into one folder that Brother set up. It's buried down in your "My Documents" folder. If you use this, you'll have to manually sort anything you scan to where you want it. So now I've got a sixth folder. That I can select if I browse, or just press the button. Meh. Easier to use the program and browse there than scan things in to a hard drive directory that Ponce DeLeon himself couldn't find and have to move them all manually.
This was the best buy I ever made. It's small so it doesn't take up much room. The scanning quality is amazing! When I sent some scanned old family pictures to my "Techie" brother he thought I bought a higher priced scanner. I love it and can scan just about any size up to 8 1/2" wide.
I bought this to do a project. I took all of my parents old pictures from their albums that were falling apart, scanned them onto a flashdrive for both my sister and I (for safekeeping), and put them back in new albums. (You can also choose to have it sent to a folder on your desktop or something as well.) Keep in mind that I have done over 1200 pictures so far and I'm not even close to being finished. I started with pictures from the 1970's and I'm only in the mid-1990's, so I have a ways to go, but it's chugging along and is amazing! I wanted a scanner that I could continuously feed pictures up to 8x10 size and it worked perfectly. The software was easy to install and use, the scanner is a decent size and easy to store away. I could continuously feed the pictures through and stop when I needed to. I did learn my lesson to be careful with any pictures that might have tape residue on the back. I didn't realize some of mine had some tape on the back and they got stuck in the device. I was able to remove them, but feared I had ruined it, but thankfully everything was just fine. I stuck them on index cards instead and fed them through with no problem. I love this scanner and I am very happy with my purchase!
Feature Product
- Compact and lightweight measures under 12" in length and weighs less than 1 lb
- The drivers and utilities on the CD-ROM/ DVD-ROM for Windows 8 or earlier bundled with your Brother machine are NOT compatible with Windows 10;All drivers and utilities on the CD-ROM can be downloaded on Brother's website
- Daily Duty Cycle (max. pages)- 100. Media Weights- Single Sheets (min/max)- 16 - 28. Paper Size- Single Sheet (max.)- 8.5(W) x 32(L) Inches
Description
The Brother DS-620 Mobile Scanner is perfect for the mobile professional who needs a powerful scanner that will slide right into a briefcase or travel bag. Delivering speeds of up to 8 pages per minute(1), this mobile scanner is perfect for capturing digital images of business documents, receipts, business cards, identification cards, photos, invoices, and more. The DS-620 can scan at resolutions up to 1200 × 1200 dpi interpolated and 600 × 600 dpi optical, in color or black and white. Measuring less than a foot in length and weighing less than one pound, this portable scanner is easy to operate and powered by USB. Its inclusion of a valuable suite of scanning software make it an exceptional fit for homes and small businesses or for anyone requiring an on-the-road scanner.
The Brother mobile scanner includes multiple software solutions, including desktop document management, business card management, and OCR management. These help you stay organized once you’ve captured your digital image. The DS-620 is also compatible with BR-Receipts(2), a receipt management software solution for organizing scanned receipts and data by exporting them to the QuickBooks and Quicken programs. This portable digital scanner is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac and comes with a one-year limited warranty and free phone support for the lifetime of the product.
(1)Color and monochrome scan speed with all advanced features turned off, LTR at 300dpi. See manufacturer’s website for details.(2)Additional purchase required. BR-Receipts software available via download from Brother Online (only available in the USA). Visit manufacturer’s website for download details. Quicken and QuickBooks are trademarks and service marks of Intuit Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.
Works well with Linux and Windows. I would usually scan into TIFF and use Tesseract (command line OCR program from Google) to convert it to PDF.
On Windows, I use "Not Another PDF Scanner 2" (NAPS2) instead of the programs provided by the Brother CD. NAPS2's is a lot more user-friendly for creating multi-page PDF/TIFF.
On Linux, I use gscan2pdf. Gets the job done. One down side of the scanner for Linux is that the Linux SANE driver doesn't auto-crop like their Windows TWAIN driver, this makes batch jobs a little time consuming. I have yet to find a Linux set up that is streamline enough for creating multi-page PDF/TIFF.
This is an excellent scanner, fast and reliable, and I highly recommend the PaperPort document manager that comes with it. I bought this scanner as a replacement for a Neat Receipts scanner because the Neat website was so buggy that their scanner was almost useless in practice. The Brother customer service is also excellent, I submitted a request and received a phone call from an actual person within two days to fix my problem.
The scanner is compact and powered through the USB cord, so you only have one cord to worry about. I scanned a document with fine print at the different resolutions (200, 300, & 600 dpi), and decided that I prefer 300 dpi for most routine scanning, and 600 dpi for items with fine print. Scanning is fast, at least four times as fast as my Neat scanner at 300 dpi, and slightly faster even at the highest resolution. I have been using it for three months with no problems.
The disc that came with the scanner was defective, but I was able to download the scanner driver from the website and get started. I had to contact tech support for the PaperPort software, and as I said eariler they called back pretty quickly and made certain I installed the software with no difficulty. There are guides for Getting Started and How To, which made the software easy to figure out.
The PaperPort software opens with a view similar to File Explorer. I can see the entire Documents folder on my computer, and a folder was created for My PaperPort Documents, which is where I keep my scanned documents. To scan a new document I just select the folder I want to send the document to (any folder in Documents), click the "scan now" tile in the menu bar, then I check the settings and go. It defaults to the previous settings, but I can easily change the resolution, B&W/color, etc. before scanning. Very easy and intuitive, and so much faster than the Neat system!
This doesn't come with an on-line cloud service like the Neat system, but that also means I don't need to pay a monthly subscription. I can just back up my documents to a DropBox and have on-line backup and access that way. Overall I am very happy with this scanner, and finally clearing my desk of all of the documents that were backing up as I struggled with my old Neat system.
Got this to use in my semi truck to scan the BOL to my company so I can get paid. The image quality is very good and the scanning is very quick. I'm using this with Win10 with no issues. I had to get the drivers from Brothers website because my laptop doesn't have a dvd drive. The drivers installes with no issues. I use the full version of Adobe Acrobat to scan the BOLs to pdf format and it works flawlessly with Adobe. The compact size is great for being inside of my truck which has limited storage. I would recommend and would buy again.
Love this thing! Have scanned hundreds of pages from our file cabinet to go paperless. Still have hundreds of pages to go, but confident it will do the job easily.
Plugged into my MacBook Air, downloaded software, started scanning. I created a folder structure, and the software lets you define location and file name before you scan. Multiple pages are easy, just keep scanning until last page is done, then click Cancel and the document is stored as multi-page PDF.
If document is shaded or background color, just switch from B&W to Color. Can set resolution higher if needed. I normally use B&W at 200 dpi and all documents are clear and readable.
When you insert the document, it takes 2-3 seconds before the scanner “grabs” the paper, then you let go and click the Scan button in the software. Scan takes 8 seconds for 8.5 x 11 document. I was able to scan drivers license and other wallet-size items easily as well.
My only quibble would be that the documents are frequently slightly skewed because the process of feeding into the slot without a feeder tray is prone to slight error. Doesn’t affect the readability, so not important.
I highly recommend this quality piece of gear. So simple, intuitive, portable, reliable, and solidly-built.
I decided to get this for a fairly BIG project... We had an entire steamer trunk FULL of family photos, 15+ years worth. We are downsizing to possibly live tiny and we knew this was a time consuming project.
The Brother Mobile Color Page Scanner was easy to set up on our MacBook Air, The photos and holiday cards (Christmas, Birthdays, Weddings, Anniversaries, etc.) We scanned them onto our computer and then uploaded them onto Shutterfly to make years photo albums! We consolidated 15+ years of papers and photos into a 15 slim photo albums that fit perfectly on a small bookshelf.
I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who wants to go paperless, consolidate OR going tiny! This scanner is slim, portable and fast. I was hesitant to all the great reviews but I am here to validate them all! This is a great product.
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