Question about Epson EcoTank ET-4856

Yes, it works. I didn't know either and had to try it out myself first. You can place a volage directly or feed several pages with ADF. After scanning, you can save the document as an image (tiff, jpeg, png) or as a PDF or searchable PDF. However, the whole process is rather slow: 200 dpi: 30 sec/page, 600 dpi: 2 min/page. However, OCR processing is then fast, a few seconds.

Can the device scan double pages? In other words, can it scan front and back pages automatically without manual intervention (i.e. turning the page by hand)?

Yes but only one side. For two sides you must scan one side first, then manually flip and feed again