Hello MPU community and friends! I’ve had my Brother 1250W scanner for several years now, and I’m finally getting fed up with how much I have to “babysit” it; both with loading pages and its limited capacity.
It’s rated for about 15–18 pages at a time, which is usually fine for my wife and me. But with tax season coming up (and a new business under our belts), we’ve got larger documents that need to be scanned, and I hate having to hover over it while it does its thing.
My workflow is still pretty simple: I use an old Hazel rule that Katie set up years ago to OCR and move files around automatically, and that part works flawlessly. (Thought I’m interested in some ways to use Apple’s AI models to help with naming in the future)
Does anyone have experience with the newer ScanSnap iX1600 and its capabilities? Specifically, I’m curious how well it handles “just load the pages and let it rip” compared to what I’m dealing with now.
I can’t address the newer ScanSnap iX1600, but I use an iX500 I bought 13 years ago and have run 23,000 sheets through since with no problems. I also use that Hazel rule, but it isn’t needed for any document you scan with the ScanSnap as OCR is built-in.
If the iX500 broke today I wouldn’t hesitate ordering an iX1600 to replace it right away. Although there is a new iX2500 that looks to have better specs at the same cost.
I have a iX1600 and love it. Works, just works. What I don’t like is that their software requires Rosetta which is being depreciated. So, I just use their cloud services along with a free account to dropbox. It scans to the cloud and sends the result to dropbox for my downloading. I handle everything from the mobile app. Outside of Rosetta, I can recommend it wholeheartedly. I think the newest is ix2400?
Same here, got the S1300i many years ago because of MPU <3 and its still working. Don’t know how many pages i did scan, but a lot. Digitized all all my documents and made them searchable.
Replacement would be a iX1300. But i will look at the iX 1600.
I’m still using my ancient ScanSnap S510M Works great. When it finally dies (we’ve done multiple repairs to it over the years) we’ll probably look at the current version of ScanSnap.
But FWIW I’ve never had a scanner that was load and forget it. The varied document sizes, paper types and volume of stuff I scan mean I always have to babysit it at least a bit. I just moved the scanner so I have to stand up to put the papers in. I use that time to look out the window and take a break. Just finished scanning and then shredding over a foot of misc papers. of all sizes and shapes. Scanning took about an hour with multiple hand feeds of stuff that the automatic feed choked on. Shredding took almost twice as long.
My S1300 is still working, massaged with Exactscan Pro. But I replaced it with the ix2500 as I had a lot of scanning to do. The ix2500 works flawlessly; it needs far less babysitting than the s1300. But, it is a little too much scanner for my usual needs. I have a bit of buyers remorse because of the price, but I still have a little dance of joy when in scans effortlessly and quickly (compared to the s1300).
If the ix1600 has inherited its ix500 predecessor’s genes, I would absolutely get it. I’ve been using my ix500 relentlessly since 2013ish when @macsparky convinced me that I needed one (it didn’t take much convincing). It handles the let it rip work mode brilliantly; I’ve converted many file drawers worth of documents to digital without a hitch through a dozen different OS, and I’ve never performed any maintenance on it. It, ahem, just works.