Panasonic's KV-S1037X ($675) is essentially an updated version of the company's KV-S1026C-MKII document scanner we reviewed a few months ago. The enhancements here include network connectivity, support for USB 3.1, and a few other notable upgrades. One of the KV-S1037X's most direct competitors, though, is an Editors' Choice pick, Brother's formidable ADS-2700W Wireless High-Speed Desktop Document Scanner, which is slightly less expensive and a bit faster and more accurate—emphasis, though, on the slightly. Still, on the whole, the entry-level KV-S1037X is speedy, good at OCR, and reliable, making it suitable for light-duty scanning in small offices, home offices, and workgroups.
Lean and Powerful
Measuring 5.4 by 12 by 7 inches (HWD) with its trays closed, and weighing a light 5.9 pounds, the KV-S1037X is a little smaller than most sheet-feed desktop document scanners, but about right for a low-volume model. Brother's ADS-2700W ($540.50 at Amazon) , for instance, is 1.6 inches taller but weighs about the same, and the size and girth differences between the Panasonic model and both the Epson DS-575W Wireless Color Document Scanner and the Epson WorkForce ES-500W Wireless Duplex Document Scanner are negligible, too. If desk space is at a premium, you'll find that these and most other entry-level sheet-feed scanners have similar footprints.
The KV-S1037X's automatic document feeder (ADF) holds up to 50 sheets, ranging in size from 1.9 by 2.1 inches, up to 8.5 inches wide by unlimited inches long. Panasonic rates the daily duty cycle at 3,000 scans. These volume and capacity stats are about right for an entry-level scanner. The ADF size and duty-cycle rating for the Brother ADS-2700W are, for example, the same as the KV-S1037X's, while both the Epsons I mentioned above have 50-sheet ADFs but duty cycles that are 1,000 pages greater.
Similar Products
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I'll discuss the connectivity options in more detail in a moment, but it's also important to note that the KV-S1037X (like the Brother ADS-2700W) supports Ethernet networking and Wi-Fi, whereas the two Epson machines support only wireless networking. In addition, like most Panasonic scanners, this one comes with a small detachable guide that feeds various types of thick cards, such as credit cards and laminated IDs, for scanning, as well as a carrier sheet for protecting fragile documents as they pass through the scan path.
Typically, low-volume machines like the KV-S1037X don't come with sophisticated touch-screen control panels for operating the scanner. The KV-S1037X's control panel (one of the more rudimentary I've seen of late) consists of just a few buttons running down the right side of the front panel. These are Power, Skip (for ignoring double-feeds), Select buttons 1, 2, and 3 (for choosing a pre-designed workflow profile, such as Scan to Folder, Scan to Email, or Scan to FTP), and a Start/Stop toggle for initiating and canceling scans. Three status LEDs—Error, Wireless, and Ready—are positioned above the column of buttons. Of the entry-level scanners discussed here so far, only Brother's ADS-2700W comes with a graphical touch screen for setting up and initiating scans. The two Epson models discussed above have controls similar to those of the KV-S1037X.
To the left of the panel, you'll find a legend for the various buttons and lights, which includes a space for writing in the corresponding profile names for the three Select buttons. You create the profiles and assign them to the individual buttons using Panasonic's Image Capture Plus software or the Scan Button Setting Tool, which I'll discuss momentarily.
Connections and Software
While the KV-S1037X's connectivity options are sufficient for most small or home offices, this Panasonic model lacks the versatile mobile-device support I'm used to seeing on most competing machines, especially networkable models with Wi-Fi radios. It does not, for example, support either of the two popular peer-to-peer network protocols, Wi-Fi Direct or Near-Field Communication (NFC), for connecting directly from a mobile device to the scanner without an intermediary network or router. For connecting your PCs to the scanner, Panasonic provides an app called Image Capture Plus.
What you do get are USB 3.1, Wi-Fi (supporting 802.11n), and Ethernet (supporting speeds up to gigabit). Brother's ADS-2700W, on the other hand, supports these connections and throws in Wi-Fi Direct, while Epson's DS-575W ($698.00 at Amazon) , while lacking Ethernet, supports NFC. In any case, not all scanning environments need or even want scanning to smartphones as an option, so the KV-S1037X's lack of wide mobile support may not be a huge shortcoming for some environments.
Aside from the drivers (including TWAIN and ISIS), you get Image Capture Plus with OCR Engine, which is Panasonic's primary scanning UI; User Utility, which resides in the system tray, monitoring the scanner and your PC's connection to it; and the Scan Button Setting Tool, a utility for assigning an application to the completion of a scan batch. For example, once a batch is scanned and converted to the desired format, you might want it sent to, say, Adobe Acrobat for additional formatting and finishing. You can designate that via the Scan Button Setting Tool. For document and business card management and archiving, Panasonic provides Presto PageManager 9 and Bizcard 6 Software, respectively.
With Image Capture Plus, you can also create profiles, which contain data controlling all aspects of a scan job: scan resolution, destination file format, and scan destination. Image Capture Plus comes with a few ready-made profiles for basic tasks. You can edit these as needed or create your own. The "OCR" in the software's name stands for, of course, optical character recognition, the process of converting scanned images of text to searchable, editable text for use in document archiving and similar applications.
Between Image Capture Plus, Presto PageManager, and BizCard, you get enough to start and maintain your own document management system—but at a list price nearly $300 higher than that of the Brother ADS-2700W.
Smooth, Steady Performance
Panasonic rates the KV-S1037X at 30 pages per minute (ppm) for scanning one-sided (simplex) pages and 60 images per minute (ipm) for two-sided (duplex) scans. Each page side constitutes an image. I ran my tests from inside Image Capture Plus over USB on our standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.
Typically, to obtain their ppm and ipm ratings, most scanner manufacturers time scan jobs from when the Start button is clicked until the last page in the batch hits the output tray. They ignore the time required to save the batch to a usable file format, such as image or searchable PDF; I call that portion of the overall scanning period the "lag time."
Discounting the lag time, the KV-S1037X scanned my one-sided 25-page test document at the rate of 69.3ppm and my two-sided 25-page (50-page-side) test document at 133.5ipm, well exceeding Panasonic's ratings. When saving the same two documents to image PDFs, the KV-S1037X churned at 33.3ppm and 68.2ipm. Not only are these speeds close enough to Panasonic's ratings to call them a match, but they're also quite close to those of the competing Brother and Epson scanners that I've mentioned in comparison throughout this review.
That's impressive, seeing as all three of those other machines have slightly higher scan-time ratings of 35ppm and 70ipm. To be exact, the Brother ADS-2700W came in 0.4ppm and 5ipm faster than the KV-S1037X; the Epson DS-575W was 2.4ppm and 0.8ipm faster; and the Epson ES-500W ($444.99 at Amazon) managed 2ppm faster and tied the KV-S1037X in duplex mode.
In my next test, the KV-S1037X scanned and saved a two-sided 25-page (50-side) document to the more useful searchable PDF file format in 1 minute and 3 seconds. That's slightly behind the other machines discussed here, but not by much. The ADS-2700W beat it by 13 seconds, the DS-575W by 15 seconds, and the ES-500W by 19 seconds.
OCR Accuracy: No Editing Required
The ideal document scans are those that you can pop into your document-management or other destination program immediately, without having to open the file to correct conversion errors. Unless you're scanning documents with unusually tiny fonts, you should have no problem doing that with the KV-S1037X's scans.
When scanning my Arial-font test page, for example, the KV-S1037X scanned without errors down to 6-point type. Also, it was dead-accurate with my Times New Roman text sample down to 8 points. These aren't the best scores I've seen; the Brother ADS-2700W, testing down to 5 points without errors with my Arial page and down to 4 points for Times New Roman, has that distinction among scanners of this class. But the Epson DS-575W and ES-500W were a bit behind, both scanning down to only 8 points without mistakes on the Arial page and 10 points for Times New Roman. In any case, few documents are composed in type smaller than 8 points, meaning that the KV-S1037X's accuracy should match up well for most business applications.
In Sum: Solid Document Capture
If you shop around, you'll see no shortage of snappy, accurate, and reliable document scanners these days, even entry-level ones. The Panasonic KV-S1037X is certainly among that class. When it comes to winning an Editors' Choice nod, though, it and its contemporaries have to face that brutally efficient Brother ADS-2700W.
Not only is the Brother model's feature set exceptional, but its speed and accuracy are above average, too. Furthermore, it lists for $100 to $400 less than several competing entry-level and midrange models. In the Panasonic's case, the higher price gains you the ability to scan unlimited-length pages (compared to the Brother model's 196-inch limitation), a mixed batch guide for scanning plastic cards and standard-size documents in the same batch, and a three-year warranty, versus the ADS-2700W's single year of coverage.
The bottom line, though, is that while the Panasonic KV-S1037X is indeed an excellent document scanner, the Brother model is, with its awesome accuracy and significantly lower price, hard to beat. The KV-S1037X comes close, making it more than a suitable alternative for light-duty scanning in small offices, home offices, and workgroups
The Panasonic KV-S1037X is a fast, accurate network document scanner with a comprehensive software bundle, making it a strong data-collection solution.
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Former Contributing Editor
