Where the seven land on published ipm

The two 20-sheet units, the ScanSnap iX1300 and the Brother ADS-1800W, publish 60 ipm. Both Epsons publish 70 ipm. The Brother ADS-4300N publishes 80 ipm, the ScanSnap iX2500 publishes 90 ipm, and the Visioneer Patriot PD45 publishes 100 ipm at 300 dpi and 120 ipm at 200 dpi.

The bigger swing is resolution mode. Ricoh publishes 45 ppm for the iX2500 in Normal, Auto and Better modes but 13 ppm in Excellent mode, and the iX1300 drops from 30 ppm to 9 ppm the same way. Epson states its 35 ppm for the ES-580W at 300 dpi, and Visioneer publishes separate 200 dpi and 300 dpi figures for the PD45. Choosing the highest-quality setting for an archive of plain text can cost more time than choosing the slower scanner would have.

Hopper size decides how often you stand at the machine

The same 500-sheet box is 25 hopper loads on a 20-sheet feeder, seven on the 80-page ADS-4300N and five on any of the 100-sheet units. Capacity does not change how fast pages move, but it decides whether you can start a stack and walk away or have to feed the machine every couple of minutes.

One published number shows how quickly a receipt workflow eats capacity. Ricoh rates the iX2500 at 100 sheets of A4 but 50 sheets with its Receipt Guide attached. That is the only receipt-specific capacity figure among the seven.

Only three of the seven publish a duty cycle

A daily duty cycle is the manufacturer’s stated ceiling on pages per day. What it tells you is how heavily the maker expects the unit to be loaded over a working day, which is exactly the question a weekend backlog session raises.

Brother publishes 1,000 pages per day for the ADS-1800W and 6,000 for the ADS-4300N. Visioneer publishes 10,000 for the PD45. An absent figure is not a low one, but it leaves you nothing to measure a 3,000-sheet weekend against.

Divide your pile by the published number. A 2,500-sheet archive is three separate days under Brother’s 1,000-page ceiling for the ADS-1800W and a single session against the ADS-4300N or the PD45. If you plan to clear boxes in long sittings, the two 20-sheet units are mismatched on this count as well as on hopper size.

Double-feed detection protects against the page you never see again

A jam stops the machine and you fix it. Two sheets travelling together do not stop anything; the second page simply never becomes a file, and you discover it when you need it. The specification to look for is a named detection method, and the seven split four ways.

Ricoh names overlap detection by ultrasonic sensor plus length detection for the iX2500. Epson names Ultrasonic Double Feed Detection for the ES-580W. Those are the two units here that state the sensing method. Epson names TrueFeed Technology for the RR-600W, and Brother names a Multi-page Feed Sensor for the ADS-4300N; both are named features, but neither page says how the sensing works. Ricoh lists length detection alone for the iX1300, with no overlap sensor named. Brother’s ADS-1800W page and Visioneer’s PD45 page name nothing at all.

That last gap matters most on the PD45, because it leads this group on speed, duty cycle and bundled OCR. A spec sheet that details 120 ipm and a 10,000-page day but never names a detection method leaves the buyer’s core fear unanswered. It may well have one; the point is that you cannot confirm it from the manufacturer’s own material.

Receipts and long printouts need both ends of the size range

A minimum size tells you whether a small thermal receipt or a card will feed; a maximum length tells you whether a long statement or a folded printout will.

Ricoh lists the iX2500 at 8.5 x 19.68 in (216 x 500 mm) in standard use, with a long-page mode to 3,000 mm, about 118 in, when driven from a PC. The iX1300 is listed at 8.5 x 14 in on both of its paper paths, with no long-page figure. Brother lists single pages up to 197 in for the ADS-1800W plus a built-in feeder for business, credit and ID cards. Brother publishes no size range for the ADS-4300N, and Epson publishes none for the RR-600W, which is a notable gap on a scanner marketed for receipts.

What each connection adds

The ES-580W saves to a USB memory drive and scans wirelessly to cloud destinations including Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. The ADS-1800W scans to a USB stick through its host port, though Brother says touchscreen destinations are configured from Mobile Connect or a connected computer. The iX2500 adds direct saving to a network folder over Wi-Fi. The ADS-4300N is the one wired-network unit, with Ethernet so several computers can share it. The PD45 is USB only; Visioneer sells network sharing as a separate VAST Network product.

When a 20-sheet feeder is genuinely enough

The iX1300 and ADS-1800W carry the two lowest published weights here, at 4.4 lb and 3.1 lb, and both have Wi-Fi. They fit a desk where a 100-sheet scanner would not, and for a drawer of statements fed a folder at a time, 60 ipm and 20 sheets is workable.

They are not enough for boxes. Every 500 sheets is 25 reloads, the ADS-1800W carries a 1,000-page daily ceiling, and the iX1300 relies on length detection alone with a 14 in maximum page. For a bulk archive, the decision sits among the five larger units, and it turns on which gap you can live with: no duty cycle from Ricoh and Epson, no detection method from Visioneer, no OCR or size range from Brother’s ADS-4300N.