The Kodak ScanMate i1150WN ($650) from Kodak Alaris is similar in many ways to its previous iteration, the Kodak ScanMate i1150, except that it supports both wired and wireless networking. It's not, however, as fast as some network-ready scanners we have reviewed, including the Editors' Choice Brother ImageCenter ADS-3600W and Epson's significantly less expensive WorkForce ES-500W Wireless Duplex Document Scanner. Even though the i1150WN is not lickety-split, it's plenty fast enough for many micro office and workgroup environments, and it comes with slick and easy-to-use software, making it a good choice for low-to-moderate network document scanning, especially for use at the front desk in medical and dental offices.
Well-Designed and Feature-Rich
The i1150WN ($749.99 at Amazon) is two-toned, with a black face and off-white chassis and trays. At 9.7 by 13 by 6.3 inches (HWD) with its trays closed, and weighing 7 pounds, it's about average in size and weight for a sheet-feed document scanner in its class. And, as with its competitors, when you extend its input and output trays, its height more than doubles, and its depth triples. Even so, it's most likely still small enough to sit comfortably beside you on your desktop.
The scanner supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi, as well as Wi-Fi Direct, as does the Brother ADS-3600W. On the other hand, the Epson ES-500W and the Canon imageFormula DR-C225W ( at Amazon) support only Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct. (In some scenarios, especially offices with older 802.11 wireless networks, Ethernet provides faster throughput.) The ScanMate i1150WN's automatic document feeder (ADF) holds up to 75 pages, which is on the high side for scanners in this class. The duty-cycle rating for the i1150WN, however, is on the lower side at 3,000 scans daily. (The ADS-3600W, for example, is rated at 5,000 daily scans.)
Of the scanners mentioned here so far, only the ScanMate i1150WN and the Brother model have displays that allow you to scroll through and choose from lists of predefined workflow profiles. The i1150WN comes with nine predefined profiles that you can either use as-is, modify, or redefine and rename. Profiles are modified and configured in the bundled Kodak Smart Touch software (discussed in the Easy Installation and Slick Software section below). Unfortunately, though, unlike most other document scanners that allow you to configure numerous profiles, Smart Touch supports only nine. The control panel displays the profile names (Color PDF, Black and White PDF, and so on), making them easy to identify, so we can't determine a reason for limiting the number to so few. Then again, nine is most likely enough for most environments.
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Aside from the display, which also shows other info, such as connection type, and the name of the PC using the scanner, the i1150WN's control panel consists of six buttons: Cancel, Up and Down (for scrolling through profiles) Scan (Start), Info (for displaying data about the scanner itself, such as network type, IP address, and so on), and Power. Supported file types are BMP, JPEG, image and searchable PDF, PNG, RTF, and single and multipage TIFF. Supported destinations are Application, Box, Email, Evernote, Fax, File, Google Drive, Printer, SharePoint Online, and WebDav. Multiple resolutions between 100dpi and 1,200dpi are available.
Easy Installation and Slick Software
For the most part, our installation process was straightforward, except that the installation software displayed some confusing options. To level the field, we scan via USB, even on scanners that support networking. While the installation software found the machine connected to the testbed PC, it displayed messages pertinent to installing the scanner on a network, with no option pertaining to USB, which left us guessing at which option to pick. In addition, one of the bundled programs, Kodak Capture Pro Lite, forced us to register it before allowing it to be downloaded.
In addition to Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB, and Wi-Fi direct, the i1150WN supports what Kodak Alaris calls "driverless scanning" via a Web API (application programming interface), as well as pre-configuration from Kodak Alaris' site or the scanner itself. Operating a scanner like this from a web browser is somewhat rare, but not unheard of. The Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula ScanFront 400 ($1,496.00 at Amazon) , for example, provides a similar feature, and it's not unusual for organizations with customized document management back ends to create Web apps for the frontend.
This model's method for reconfiguring a scanner prior to deployment, on the other hand, is unique. IT professionals can create a PDF, via either the scanner's Web interface or on Kodak Alaris' site, that in turn, when scanned by the end user, automatically configures the machine for immediate deployment. Both options are ideal for deploying scanners in remote or multiple locations.
Aside from the usual TWAIN and ISIS drivers, the bundled software consists of Kodak Capture Pro Lite, Kodak Asset Management, a 30-day trial version of Kodak Capture Pro, Kodak Smart Touch, and EMC Captiva Toolkit. Capture Pro is a full-featured scanning interface, and between it and Asset Management, you get decent document-management tools. EMC Captiva Toolkit is a developer's utility for creating connectors that allow you to send scans to cloud-based applications.
Smart Touch is the primary scanning utility that not only lets you select and execute profile-based scans, but also lets you modify and rename them. It's also the program that the scanner interacts with to download profile names and numbers. Much like Xerox's OneTouch interface, Smart Touch has a small, easy-to-use front end that resides in the system tray, as well as a powerful backend for modifying profiles. As mentioned, though, unlike OneTouch, which allows you to create additional profiles, Smart Touch restricts you to the original nine, though you can modify and rename them ad infinitum. For Mac users, Newsoft Presto! PageManager and Presto! BizCard Xpress are bundled.
Steady as She Goes
Kodak Alaris told us that its primary focus for the i1150WN is in front desk settings where the person who operates the scanner works directly with customers or clients, often scanning information while they wait. To that end, in scenarios where it's assumed that most scan runs consist of 10 pages or less, the company designed the i1150WN with what it calls a Transaction Mode that scans the first 10 pages at 40 pages per minute (ppm) and the remaining pages at 30ppm for one-sided (simplex) pages, and 80 images per minute (ipm, where each page side is an image) for the first 10 pages and 60ipm thereafter for two-sided pages.
Essentially, then, the scanner's rating is 30ppm simplex and 60ipm duplex. In testing, without the lag time (the time between when the last page lands on the output tray and the scan job is subsequently saved to a useable file format), the i1150WN scanned our test documents at 31.6ppm and 63.2ipm, or just above its ratings.
When scanning and saving the same test documents to image PDF, it churned at 27.3ppm and 54.5ipm, or not too far from its ratings. Brother's ADS-3600W ($999.97 at Amazon) , on the other hand, scanned and saved the same pages to image PDF at 46.2ppm and 96.8ipm; the Epson ES-500W ($444.99 at Amazon) managed 35.3ppm and 68.2ipm; and the Canon DR-C225W got 25ppm and 47ipm.
Where the i1150WN took its biggest performance hit, though, was when saving scans to searchable PDF. Many scanners slow down significantly here, but usually not this much. Kodak Alaris told us that this was most likely due to its Perfect Page Scanning feature, which essentially applies several page accuracy-increasing adjustment routines and image enhancement filters, such as cropping, rotation, image sharpening, streak filtering, color dropout, and many others, to the scan. We therefore tried scanning both ways—with and without Page Perfect—but got essentially the same scores either way.
That said, the i1150WN scanned and saved our two-sided 25-page (50 images) document to searchable PDF in 1 minute, 35 seconds. This was more than 20 seconds slower than the other scanners discussed here, with the DR-C225W coming in second to last at 1:12. The Epson ES-500W was fastest at 44 seconds.
When Accuracy is Paramount
Maybe the i1150WN didn't scan as fast as its competitors, but when converting scanned text to editable text, it outperformed all of its competition. The Smart Touch software was accurate (without errors) on both our Arial and Times New Roman font test pages down to 6 points, compared with the Brother ADS-3600W's and the Canon DR-C225W's 6 points Arial and 8 points Times New Roman, and the Epson ES-500's 8 points for both fonts. In many applications, accuracy is far more important than speed.
Speed isn't Everything
Aside from its somewhat slow (but not necessarily dismal) performance in saving to searchable PDFs, there's a lot to like about the Kodak ScanMate i1150WN, including its several connectivity options. Its Web interface makes it easier to deploy in existing document-management backends, and the Smart Touch software allows you to present one-click (or touch) interfaces to your end users. The i1150WN is a bit more expensive than we'd like, but its accuracy and ease of use provide additional value. Its somewhat steep price precludes it from gaining our Editors' Choice nod, but otherwise this is an excellent document scanner for low-to-moderate document scanning in a small office or workgroup, or for front-desk settings in medical offices or banks.
The Kodak ScanMate i1150WN is a bit slow for the price, but this scanner comes with numerous network and other connectivity options and terrific software, and OCR accuracy is above average.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout William Harrel
Former Contributing Editor
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