The HP ScanJet Pro 3500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($549.99) is a versatile document scanner that includes both a flatbed and an automatic document feeder (ADF). This scanner, which supports USB 3.0, is a good choice for light to medium-duty scanning in a micro office or a small workgroup. The 3500 ($548.90 at Amazon) doesn't have the speed, especially in scanning to searchable PDF, as some comparable scanners such as the the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-2020U , but it offers more than enough for the needs of most micro offices.

Design and Features
At 5.7 by 18.1 by 15.2 inches (HWD) and 12.3 pounds, the 3500 is too large to comfortably fit on a desk. On top is a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning multipage documents. Using the ADF, the maximum optical resolution is 600 dots per inch (dpi). The letter-size flatbed has a higher 1,200dpi resolution. The 3500 has a recommended daily duty cycle of up to 3,000 pages, making it fit for heavier-duty scanning than the HP ScanJet Pro 2500 f1 Flatbed Scanner ($298.90 at Amazon) , which has a daily duty cycle of 1,500 pages.

On a panel in front of the flatbed are a two-line LCD and buttons for simplex/duplex scanning, Power, cancel, back, and tools/maintenance. There are also up- and down-arrow keys flanking an OK button, that let you choose between scan profiles defined with the HP Scan utility.

Software
The 3500 includes two discs, one with the HP Scan utility, as well as Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers, and the other with ReadIris Pro 14 for OCR, CardIris Pro 5.5 for business-card scanning, and Nuance PaperPort 14.5 for document management. The Twain and ISIS drivers let you scan to nearly any Windows program that has a scan command.

The HP Scan utility lets you create, edit, delete, and prioritize scan profiles, and launch scans using any of the profiles. Default profiles include Save as PDF, Save as JPEG, Email as PDF, Email as JPEG, Save as Editable Text (OCR), Scan to Cloud (destinations include Dropbox and Google Drive), and Everyday Scan.

Performance
The 3500 is rated at 25 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex scanning and 50 images per minute (ipm) for duplex scanning, where each side of a page is considered a separate image. In scanning to image PDF at default settings (200 dpi, color) using the Save to PDF preset, I timed it at 22.4ppm in simplex and 34ipm in duplex, reasonably close to its rated speed, particularly for simplex scanning.

The 3500 doesn't have a preset for scanning to searchable PDF, so we used the settings for image PDF, only changing the output file type. It took 5 minutes 44 seconds to scan and save our 25-page, 50-image document to searchable PDF. This is an unusually long time, even for color scanning. I did some ad-hoc testing in other color modes, and found it fastest in scanning to black (2:43). This is still well over a minute longer than the 3500 took to scan to image PDF. Many scanners have similar speeds in scanning to searchable PDF, such as the Epson WorkForce DS-6500 ($849.00 at Amazon) , which we timed at 2:36, but the 3500 is well off the top tier. The Canon imageFormula DR-F120 ($380.00 at Canon) took just 9 seconds longer to scan and save our test document to searchable PDF (1:38) than it took to scan to image PDF, while the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-2020U lost no time at all in scanning to searchable PDF, however, taking 1:23 to scan and save our test document to both image and searchable PDF.

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Unlike the HP 2500, which is limited to USB 2.0 connectivity, the 3500 supports USB 3.0, and comes with a USB 3.0 cable. As our scanner testbeds lack USB 3.0 ports, we do all our testing over a USB 2.0 connection. It is likely that the 3500's speeds will be faster over USB 3.0.

The 3500 did well on our OCR tests, reading our Times New Roman test page with no errors down to 6 points and our Arial test page down to 8 points. Although the 3500's ADF can scan business cards, they tended to jam, so I stuck with the flatbed for card scanning with the included CardIris Pro 5. You can scan multiple cards on the flatbed, with their data sorted into separate records. If you do that, you use a black sheet as a background when scanning white or light-colored cards, and a white sheet with dark cards. Performance was reasonably good, with a couple of error-free cards, and most of the others having between one and three errors.

Conclusion
The HP ScanJet Pro 3500 f1 Flatbed Scanner has the chops for up to medium-duty scanning in a very small office, and offers the versatility of both flatbed and sheet-fed scanning. At default settings, it was very slow at scanning to searchable PDF, though its speed can be improved simply by changing the color mode. Still, it lacks the lightning-fast speeds to searchable PDF found in some Canon scanners, such as the Editors' Choice imageFormula DR-2020U. Instead, the 3500 provides USB 3.0 connectivity and a solid software suite that includes document-management, OCR, and business-card programs.

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