Fujitsu rates the Fujitsu scansnap ix1500 driver at 40 pages per minute (ppm) for one-sided scans and 80 images per minute (ipm) for two-sided scans, though the 20-page feeder makes actually getting 40 pages scanned per minute a bit of a challenge. (I tested it over a USB 3.1 connection from our standard Intel Core i5 PC running Windows 10 Pro.)
The scans are, of course, useless until the computer processes them, which for our testing purposes consists of converting them to either image or searchable PDF, with the latter being the most useful for document management and other applications. That said, then, when scanning our standard 20-page document to image PDF, the scansnap ix1500 managed about 38.7ppm for one-sided and 75.7ipm for two-sided pages.
That's about 10ppm and 21ipm faster than the Epson ES-300W and 11.3ppm and 20.2ipm quicker than Brother's ADS-1700W. Brother's desktop ADS-2700W, on the other hand, beat the scansnap ix1500 by 6.1ppm in single-sided and fell behind it by 2.5ipm in two-sided or duplex mode, while Epson's WorkForce ES-500W proved about 1ppm quicker with one-sided and tied the Fujitsu with two-sided scans.
Converting a scan to searchable PDF, or editable text, is much more complex and usually more time-consuming. Even so, the scansnap ix1500 managed to process our 20-sheet, 40-sided text document to searchable PDF in 42 seconds—four seconds faster than the Epson ES-300W and 14 seconds faster than the Brother ADS-1700W portable scanners. Its results pretty much tied the ES-500W and ADS-2700W desktop models.
The two things the Fujitsu scansnap ix1500 lacks (three, if you ask for a bigger ADF) are its inability to network—precluding sharing or mobile devices—and its omission of a battery, which would make it much more portable. Even so, the scansnap ix1500 is uniquely suited to the job for which it's designed: front-desk or customer and client processing applications. So much so, in fact, that we've given it its own category of front-desk document scanner and made it an Editors' Choice. I'm not wild about its $795 price tag, but it nevertheless packs a lot of value. Besides, you can always look for it on sale.
