ScanSnap Connect Application (for iPad) Review

Fujitsu's ScanSnap Connect Application (free) is an iPad app that lets owners of Fujitsu ScanSnap Wi-Fi scanners scan documents and photos to their iPads, either by launching a scan from the scanner or from the app itself. It's no substitute for the scanner's bundled software suite, but it offers several ways to scan to the app and has a good range of features that let people send scans to their tablet for viewing, editing, or emailing.

ScanSnap Connect can be used with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch; I tested it using an iPad Air ($389.99 at eBay) and a Fujitsu Scansnap iX500 ($649.99 at Amazon) , our Editors' Choice document scanner for personal or light-duty office use. The app works natively with the iX500; the ScanSnap S1500, the S1500M, the S1300, and the S1100 can use the app after you update the ScanSnap software on your computer.

The app is easy enough to set up. You enable your scanner's Wi-Fi from your computer via a setup wizard that installs with the scanner's software. The utility lets you set a password that, when entered along with your Wi-Fi network's name (the SSID) in the setup field in the app, lets the app connect with the scanner.

Many Ways to Scan
There are several ways to scan and/or send documents to your iPad with ScanSnap Connect. You can, for example, launch a scan from the scanner's Scan button when the app is connected to the scanner. To initiate a scan from your iPad, you press the app's Scan button. With Scan to Mobile, you can launch a scan from the ScanSnap utility on your computer. You can also select Scan to Mobile in the scanner's Quick Menu to route a scanned document to your iPad. Finally, you can right-click on any previously scanned document parked in your computer's ScanSnap folder. You simply select Scan to Mobile to send the document to the app.

The Interface
The app's interface is simple enough and can be used in either Portrait or Landscape mode. Most of the screen is taken up by the File List, which lists all the scanned files that have been saved to the app. At the bottom corners are buttons labeled Settings and Scan. The blue Scan button launches a scan, provided that your iPad is wirelessly connected to the scanner.

Tweaking the Scanner's Settings
Pressing the Settings button lets you connect to a scanner and access information such as the scanner's name and firmware version, and signal strength. A Profile tab lets you tweak the settings for each scan. Settings you can change include Image Quality (Auto, Normal, Better, or Best); and Color Mode (Auto, Color, Gray-Scale, or Black and White); you can even adjust the brightness of a black-and-white scan. You can set it for simplex or duplex scanning, skip blank pages, and reduce bleed-through. You can set paper size (or let it select it through the Auto setting). You can also choose between PDF and JPEG for the resulting images.

By default, the filenames of scans are time-stamped, down to the second. (For example, a file I scanned was assigned the name 2014_08_28_15_05_56.PDF.) If you don't like this convention, you can enter your own choice of a filename from the Profile. 

Your Scans, Displayed
The File List includes essential information on each scan that's been sent to your iPad. A thumbnail of the file is displayed, as well as the file type (PDF or JPG), filename, date and time of the scan, number of pages, and size of the file. Tapping any file brings up a menu that lets you open the document in another program. The choice of programs is dictated by the programs on your iPad as well as the file type. For instance, you can open a JPEG file in photo-editing programs like Snapseed and PhotoGene, while PDFs can be opened in ereaders like iBooks and Kindle. Other choices include Adobe Acrobat and Goodreader, as well as sending the document to Dropbox or Evernote. (There are also some bizarre and seemingly spurious choices like SynthTronica, a musical synthesizer, for PDFs—I tried it, but I just couldn't get my documents to play!)

Each file in the list also has a blue right-arrow icon. Touching it opens the file in ScanSnap Connect's own viewer, with the filename shown at the top of the screen. At the top corners are buttons labeled Back and Edit. Back takes you back to the file list, and Edit lets you rotate or delete a file. Swiping to the left advances the pages in a multipage document, and you can flip backwards through it by swiping to the right.

At the bottom of the screen are the standard Send To and Write icons. Pressing Send To calls up the options for opening the document in another program, printing it, emailing it, or saving it to your iPad's Photo Album. Pressing the Write icon lets you rename a document, calling up the iPad's keyboard.

Benefits of Mobile Scanning
For regular workflow, managing scans on a computer is much more efficient and provides many more features than scanning to an iPad. But there may be times when you want to send scans to your device so you can view them while traveling, or scan images to your iPad to save in its Photo Album. Also, if the scanner is connected to a computer that you don't have full access to (say, if you're a guest or a consultant), ScanSnap is an easy way to send files directly to your device.

You wouldn't expect a mobile scanning app to have all the features of a computer-based software bundle, and that's the case with ScanSnap Connect. It doesn't support optical character recognition (OCR), which means you can't scan to searchable PDF, or business-card reading. (It can only scan to image PDF or JPEG formats.) But it does very well with basic scanning features, and it lets you tweak a surprising number of settings. It offers the convenience of being able to launch scans from an iPad, and receive scans launched from your scanner or computer including, in the latter case, previously scanned documents. If you have a Fujitsu Wi-Fi scanner and have even an occasional need to scan to your iPad, there's no reason not to download and use this free app.