Epson Perfection V600

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Perfection V600	A4	6400 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Epson Perfection V600 is our favorite 1200 DPI Scanner. Its pixel density and amount of image detail are much bigger than 1200 DPI, the number is actually 6400 DPI image resolution thanks to its built-in CCD sensor. The interpolated resolution is even higher than the maximum resolution, but there will not be any extra-detail if you do that, only extra pixels and much bigger files. We generally stay away from interpolating digital photo scans.

We like using the CCD array because even if the document doesn’t have perfect contact with the scanning glass, it still gets scanned. In the case of CIS (Contact Image Sensors) sensors, that doesn’t happen. Our tests have also shown the CCD sensor to have more vivid colors than its CIS counterpart, even when the color depth is the same. If you scan line art you won’t notice the difference but with photo scans you will. The backlighting is powered by an efficient ReadyScan LED with no warm-up time. It connects to your computer using a Hi-Speed USB 2.0. You get 4 customizeable buttons on the front which you can assign to any kind of scanning profile you want, an example would be to Scan to PDF.

This color scanner comes with the ABBYY FineReader Sprint Plus OCR software. We think that is a very good choice by Epson to ship the scanner with that specific software as it allows you to convert your scanned documents into PDFs and Editable Word Documents. For OCR, with documents printed on inkjet printers or laser, 300×300 dpi should be enough for good accuracy and 400 dpi optical resolution is even better. ABBYY has proven to have the highest OCR text accuracy out of all the OCR software that we have tried.

The V600 is a great film scanner too. All the features for scanning photo slides and negatives are present on the V600 and V550 and there is no difference between them. Here is a tip, the V600 only comes with 2 sets of film holders. If you want to increase productivity in scanning slides or negatives, search for “film holder epson v600” on Amazon in the office products or office supplies section and buy an extra set. That way, while the scanner is digitizing one set of films, you can load the next one and not lose any time. Epson won’t mention the aftermarket holders in the product details because they want to sell you more scanners.

This flatbed photo scanner comes with the following software bundle: Epson Easy Photo Fix, Epson Copy Utility, ArcSoft PhotoStudio, ABBYY FineReader Sprint Plus OCR. You can export the scanned images into the following file formats and file types: Bitmap, JPEG digital files, TIF & Multi-page TIFF, PDF and PCT. You have to tell the scanner beforehand if the photo you are scanning is color, grayscale or black & white, it can’t tell by itself automatically, but that was for a certain version of the Epson Scan software, things may have changed since. But it can automatically detect the scan area by itself and if you want you can also do this manually. Along with these features you also get Digital ICE features that will help with improving old photos by removing scratch marks, dust marks and tears in the photos.

It is compatible with the most commonly used operating systems: Windows and Mac OS X. You don’t need an AC adapter or power supplies, as you can power it via USB cable.

Epson Perfection V550

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Perfection V550	A4	6400 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Epson Perfection V550 is another contender for the best 1200 DPI Scanner. is very much like the Epson V600: Both have an optical resolution of 6400 DPI which allows you to produce high-quality images, both have a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and TWAIN and WIA interfaces, both have the best integrated OCR from ABBYY, it is more or less the same story and even the price is very similar.

This high resolution flatbed scanner has a disadvantage though, it has the Digital ICE image correction features available only for scanned film negatives, whereas the V600 can apply these to both negatives and normal 4×6 photos. It also has a slower scan speed.

It is worth mentioning that both the Epson V600 and the Epson V550 have the option to sync with your favorite cloud storage like Google Drive, DropBox and Evernote through the Epson software.

Also worth mentioning that both of these 1200 DPI Photo Scanners come with a special holder for 35mm film negatives, slides and also for medium format film. What is also nice about this USB scanner is that you can scan multiple photos at the same time and the scanner will detect each one of them. The 4 buttons on the front of this 1200 DPI scanner are also customizable.

Both the V550 and V600 fit the following scenario perfectly: Now at present, you are using a digital camera and digital photography has been a thing for 20 years. But you have a family history that comes with a large photo collection which includes documents and images so you need to do something about that. What you do is you buy one of these devices, you scan old photos and import them into Google Photos. That is what I did.

Tips for scanning: You don’t even need to use the Photo restorer app that comes with the scanner to improve the original scan because the Google software will correct the printed image and enhance it. Because the scanners also have negative scanning and slide scanning, if you also have old film rolls, you can digitize them as well.

The recommended resolution for scanning photos is a minimum of 600 dpi. Scanning at 1200 dpi is ideal, but will not always bring much extra detail. After that, you need to be careful with increasing the scanning dpi because you might just be increasing the file size not the detail level.

Plustek OpticPro A320L

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Plustek OpticPro A320L	A3	1600 dpi	USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 24-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Plustek OpticPro A320L is a really fast 1200 dots per inch scanner. As with the other scanners, it exceeds that digital image resolution, but not by much. The maximum pixel depth that you can get is 1600 DPI resolution. It takes 7.8 seconds to perform a scan at 300 dpi, but if you fiddle with the scanner’s settings especially the DPI setting, it will get slower as you add more DPI to scan. The same goes with file size. Our scanning tip is to be careful, because 600 dpi can make the image size 3-4 times larger than the 300 dpi version, depending on how much color there is in the original photo. That being said, the Plustek does not have as many pixels per inch as the other two scanners, so if the resolution for scanning is important to you and the document size is not, the V600 and V550 might be the better choices to scan your photos. The great thing about this flatbed scanner is that it has a scanning size of A3, so you can scan tabloid-sized documents.

The included scanner software in the package has several ICE features which help with scanning photos by removing scratch marks and dust from the color photos. These features come as standard on most flatbed scanners out there, so you don’t need a Photoshop bundle anymore. The software can automatically rotate, crop and deskew the photo. What we really love about this scanner is that it comes with the best Optical Character Recognition technology on the market. Plustek will ship this with an ABBYY FineReader 12. While it is not the latest version, it is great OCR technology that proved to have the highest text recognition accuracy out of all the OCR software that we have tested, making this a great OCR scanner.

This high-resolution flatbed scanner can output to several file formats like PDF, Searchable PDF, ePub (PC only), TIFF, JPEG, or Bitmap. It comes with TWAIN and WIA drivers so you can basically connect it to any 3rd party scanning app. We have been using the Plustek in our digitization system to complement our book scanners for many years now and it’s been so reliable we are starting to believe it will last an entire life.

What is the Best 1200 DPI Scanner to buy?

The best value for money that you will get is with the Epson V600. It has the edge over the other two in terms of image resolution and Digital ICE features for photos, not just for film and people who have used it seem to be very happy with this scanner. Yes, the Canon CanoScan Lide models were not featured and that is because these models from Epson are superior in image quality, features and scanning resolution. If you want a 1200 dpi scanner that also has an automatic document feeder then our pick would be the HP Scanjet Pro sheetfed scanner line. We also reviewed some of the best portable scanners on the market which are great for business cards and family photos made by Brother International, Epson and Fujitsu including the Brother ads-1700w, the Fujitsu ScanSnap IX100. Check out our homepage for buying guides details.