Kodak i3400 Scanner Review

For offices that need to scan at up to tabloid size, the Kodak i3400 Scanner ($5,495) delivers an impressive level of capability to go along with its hefty price. With a 250-sheet input tray and recommended daily volume of up to 20,000 pages, it's suitable for heavy-duty scan needs by department and large-office standards. And with a rated speed of 90 pages per minute (ppm)—or 180 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) originals—this departmental scanner promises to handle large stacks of paper in very little time.

The i3400 ($5,167.15 at Amazon) has a lot in common with the Kodak i3200 Scanner ($1,477.54 at Amazon) . The two share basically the same design, with the i3400 upping the ante with a faster speed and higher daily volume. That's enough of a difference to make the i3400 more directly competitive with the Panasonic KV-S5076H ($4,499.99 at Amazon) , which is our Editors' Choice high-performance departmental document scanner. The i3400 isn't quite a match for the Panasonic model, but it isn't as expensive either.

Basics
Like the Kodak i3200, the i3400 looks more like a monochrome laser printer than a scanner. It measures 9.4 by 17 by 14.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 35 pounds. As with most lasers this size, its output bin is molded into the top. Its input tray pivots down in front, adding a minimum of about 6 more inches to the depth or as much as 12 inches if you fully extend it for larger paper sizes.

The input tray is wide enough to take letter-size paper in Landscape orientation or tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) paper in Portrait orientation. You can also feed paper as large as 12 by 34 inches through the automatic document feeder (ADF), and, according to Kodak Alaris, manually feed paper as long as 160 inches.

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The control panel is also vaguely similar to the front panel on most laser printers, with an LCD and control buttons that let you choose a scan profile and start the scan. The LCD is backlit, making it easy to read, and it offers three rows of 18 characters. That's enough to let you use descriptive names when you create scan profiles and then find the right profile easily when you scroll through the choices.

As with other Kodak Alaris scanners with similar front-panel controls and software, such as the Kodak i3450 ($7,035.85 at Amazon) , my only complaint is that the scan utility limits you to a maximum of nine profiles.With descriptive text, it would be easy to choose from a longer list, and the scan utility should give you the option to define additional profiles if you need them.

Even though the i3400 doesn't include a flatbed, you can add one as an external accessory, with both legal-size ($495) and tabloid-size ($1,400) versions available. Kodak Alaris says that to install either one, you simply connect it by USB cable to the same computer the i3400 is connected to. What makes them both accessories rather than standalone scanners is that you can't use them unless you also have the i3400 (or another supported scanner) installed on the computer.

Setup
Setting up the i3400 is standard for a USB-connected scanner. Also standard for the price range is that Kodak Alaris doesn't include any application programs. The presumption is that offices that need this level of scan capability will already have the programs they need. Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers are all included, which will let you scan from almost any Windows program with a scan command. In addition, you can download drivers for Mac and Linux.

Kodak Alaris also includes the same two scan utilities that come with most of its other scanners. For my tests scanning to image PDF, searchable PDF, and editable text formats, I used Kodak SmartTouch, which includes built-in optical character recognition (OCR).

Performance
The scanner didn't quite hit its claimed 90ppm and 180ipm speed in our tests, but it came close. Scanning to a PDF image file, using the default setting of 200 pixels per inch (ppi) and black and white mode, I clocked our standard 25-sheet, 50-page test document at only 54ppm for simplex scans and 104ipm for duplex.

See How We Test Scanners

As with most scanners, however, there's a significant lag—3 to 4 seconds in this case—between giving the scan command and the scan starting, and also between the last page finishing and the file being written to disk. Subtract the lag before and after the scan, and the raw scan speed jumps to 83ppm for simplex and 167ipm for duplex. At 300ppi, the scanner came in at the same speed for simplex, but notably slower for duplex, at 87ipm for the total time, and 128ipm without the lag before and after the actual scan.

The slower speed for duplex is presumably due to a bottleneck in sending the larger amount of data over the USB 2.0 connection to the PC we use for testing. Note, however, that the scanner supports USB 3.0, so if your computer has a USB 3 port, you'll likely see faster speeds.

The scanner's performance in scanning to searchable PDF format was disappointing, with the text recognition step taking a significant amount of extra time. At 300ppi, I clocked the i3400 at 1 minute 16 seconds. That's basically tied with the less expensive Kodak i3200. More significantly, it's far slower than the Panasonic KV-S5076H, which managed to scan, recognize the text, and save the file in just 37 seconds. The Panasonic model is also a bit faster at scanning to image PDF format. The Kodak i3200, on the other hand, is much slower than the i3400 for scanning to image PDF files.

The results on our OCR tests count as a definitive plus, with the combination of scanner and software reading both our Times New Roman and Arial test pages at sizes as small as 8 points without a mistake, at both 200ppi and 300ppi.

If you need a scanner for large stacks of paper, including some at tabloid size, the Editor's Choice Panasonic KV-S5076H delivers better speed than the Kodak i3400 Scanner, at least over a USB 2.0 port, making it the obvious choice. If you don't need top speed, be sure to consider the Kodak i3200, which nearly matches the i3400's speed for scanning to searchable PDF files and costs less, too. If you're primarily interested in scanning to image PDF format, however, the i3400 offers better speed than the Kodak i3200 and isn't much slower than the Panasonic scanner, making it a perfectly reasonable choice.

Kodak i3400 Scanner

3.5

Check Stock

$5,167.15 at Amazon

MSRP $5,495.00

Pros

• Duplexer and 250-sheet automatic document feeder.
• Handles tabloid (11-by-17-inch) and larger paper.
• Recommended daily maximum is 20,000 sheets.

Cons

• Can define only nine profiles.
• Adds significant time for the text recognition step when saving to searchable PDF format.

The Bottom Line

The Kodak i3400 Scanner can be a good fit for a large workgroup or office with heavy-duty scan needs, including projects utilizing tabloid-size output.