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 V600 is our favorite 2400 DPI scanner in this category. With a CCD sensor that can output digital images and optical resolution of 6400 DPI optical without any interpolation, wthis scanner can produce high-quality images for a fraction of the price of the most advanced. The sensor is backed up by a ReadyScan LED lamp with no warm-up time. It has always been the best value for money in our opinion. When you scan at 300 dpi, the scan speed is about 6 seconds per scan. The V600 scanner connects to your Windows Computer or Mac through its USB 2.0 port. It has a color depth of 48-bit internal in color and 16-bit in grayscale. The scanning time for a document at 300 dots per inch output resolution starts from 6 seconds but it extends by a large amount if you go change the dpi setting and dpi scaling in the resolution. It also increases when you change the scan mode.

This 2400 dpi flatbed scanner comes with everything for everyone in terms of software: Epson Easy Photo Fix, Epson Copy Utility, ArcSoft PhotoStudio, ABBYY FineReader Sprint Plus OCR. That means you get a software with Digital ICE features that uses the magic of computational science for removing scratches and dust marks from film and photo slides reducing time in Photoshop, a software for optical character recognition. The Epson scanning software does a decent job of automatically setting the orientation of the photo, it can crop it and detect the scanning area by itself too. The Epson Scan Software can export the digital photos into Bitmap, JPEG, TIFF, PCT and PDF. The software and drivers for this color image scanner are compatible with both operating systems: Windows and Mac OS X. The ABBYY FineReader app proved to have great text recognition accuracy in our tests. It can convert your documents to Searchable PDF, Doc, XLS and ePub. It can’t output to XML-based file formats like DOCX and XLSX though.

It’s heavier than the Canon 300 but certainly not as heavy as the Expression with the scanner weighing 9 lbs. This flatbed photo scanner can scan flim negatives and slides with the help of the transparent materials adapter and it has a set of film holders for that. It supports 35mm and medium format film. It has a 3.4 Dmax score when it comes to density rang. That makes it a decent film scanner, but if you want something with deeper blacks, you need to look at the Expression that has a 3.8 Dmax or the V800 that has a 4.0 Dmax.

The Epson V600 is more than enough for family photos but if you need a higher image quality, have a look at the Epson perfection v850 and Epson Perfection V800, scanners which we have reviewed and talked about a lot that come with advanced features like calibration targets which you can use with color measuring devices to make the scanner output not more vivid but more accurate color photos.

If the V600 is just a bit higher than your target budget, the Epson Perfection V550 might be just right as it is a bit cheaper than the V600 and offers more or less the same features and display resolution for digitizing the printed images.

Epson Expression 12000XL-GA

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Epson Expression 12000XL-GA	A3	2400 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Epson Expression is the second 2400 DPI scanner we are reviewing. This is actually a scanner with a pixel density of 2400×2400 dpi, not more not less. First of all, what makes this scanner very different from the other two in this article is the image size: this is an A3 scanner, not A4 so its main advantage is that it can scan larger document sizes. It can connect to your Windows PC or Mac through its HiSpeed USB 2.0 port.

So this 2400 dpi color scanner costs 5 times as much as the V600 and doesn’t have the same image resolution. What are you paying for then? First of all it’s the scanning size. Very few flatbed scanners can scan A3 and they are always much more expensive. What this scanner has that more reasonably priced ones don’t are some special scanner specifications for example a 3.8 Dmax and a Dual-Lens system for its CCD sensor. The 3.8 value represents how deep the blacks are in a scan, the more the better. Like the V600 it can also scan slides and negatives and its higher dmax means deeper blacks and better images

Another big difference is the software that comes with this 2400 dpi scanner. You get SilverFast AI, an advanced scanning software with features like 64-bit HDR for the digital files, Dust and Scratch removal from the original photo film and when scanning paper photos, automatic detection of film frames in the scanned image, unsharp masking so that your images look as sharp as possible, advanced negative film to positive conversion, ACR for enhancing the vividness of colors, color correction for specific RGB channels, descreening for removing the Moire screen door effect and much more. The complete software package includes: Epson Scan with Epson Easy Photo Fix Technology, LaserSoft Imaging SilverFast Ai, IT8 Target.

In addition, you also get some calibration targets that work with the i1 X-rite device. Scanning tip: You never know how decalibrated a scanner truly is until you calibrate it and compare the differences. It will surprise you. This 2400 DPI scanner weighs considerably more than both the V600 and the Lide 400 at 14.2 kg. You buy the Expression model because you’re a photographer or you are a graphic artist, because you want the most advanced software, image quality and color accuracy. It does great with sketches, line art, small paintings and photos.

Epson also makes flatbed scanners with an automatic document feeder like the Epson Workforce DS-60000 with a 200-sheet automatic document feeder but it cannot match this resolution. At this moment, there is no duplex document scanner with flatbed that can reach 2400 DPI. HP used to make the HP scanjet N6350 flatbed scanner, but that model was retired. So for high-resolution scans, you have to go for pure flatbed scanners.

Canon CanoScan Lide 300

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Canon CanoScan Lide 300	A4	2400 dpi	USB 2.0	48-bit color or 16-bit grayscale	Click for more info

The Canon Lide 300 is the cheap 2400 DPI Scanner alternative to the other 2 scanners. It costs a fraction of the price. You can buy almost 50 of these Canon scanners for the price of one Epson Expression. The pixels per inch amount is the same, but here, the 2400 dpi resolution it is made possible by a CIS (Contact Image Sensor), not CCD (Charge-Coupled Device).

We suggest to use somewhere around the 300 dpi values to scan documents, not more because a quality scan is not needed there. From our tests with OCR text recognition, we have noticed that if the printing resolution is good enough, upgrading the resolution won’t matter much. And after 600 dpi it doesn’t matter at all. From there on it is all about how the character is printed it is more about printing size and the font used along with how consistent the printer was. Characters from laser printers and inkjet printers tend to work great. Characters from label printers and old books are harder to recognize, not because of resolution but because of the incosistency with which they are printed or difficult font.

The Canon Lide 300 is a USB scanner with USB 2.0 connectivity and that port is used to power the scanner and transfer the data, so you don’t need an extra AC adapter or power cable. The color depth is 48-bit when you scan in color and 16-bit in grayscale. The Canon comes with TWAIN drivers so that you can scan from any photo app.

The software in the package that comes with this USB document flatbed scanner includes:
Scanner Driver, IJ Scan Utility (Windows) / IJ Scan Utility Lite (Mac) Auto Scan, Document Scan, Photo Scan, Custom Scan, Stitch Scan, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition), ScanGear MP Driver, Quick Menu. It can upload your images straight to your Cloud platform that can be Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote or OneDrive. The software also has OCR that is integrated in their proprietary software, it’s not a 3rd party license for ABBYY. The scanning app can export in the following file formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG and PDF.

It is also the lightest of the 3 scanners and a very compact flatbed scanner in terms of dimensions, weighing just 3.6 lbs. This 2400 DPI flatbed scanner comes with a vertical stand, so when you are not using it, you can just put it on the stand. You can even scan when it is vertical, but it’s not a very fun experience.

Which is the Best 2400 DPI Scanner?

If you are looking for the best balance between price, quality and features in a digital scanner, of course it is the Epson V600. It has great scanning resolution, speed, it can scan film and with a 3.4 Dmax it does a decent job. If you are a professional and you need to scan larger photos sometimes, then we recommend the Epson Expression. It has all the professional features that you may need together with the amount of image detail and it covers most paper sizes. If you are just looking to solve the problem on a budget, then you need to go for the Canon Lide 300. At its extremely low price, it is a bargain. Should you need an ADF together with the flatbed unit in one package, our choice is the HP Scanjet scanner line. Hewlett Packard have been getting better and better at building complete flatbed sheetfed scanners. In case you need to scan 3d objects with very little depth, like coins, a german manufacturer called Image Access has two digital flatbed scanners called the Widetek 12 and Widetek 25. For more info on other office accessories for scanning and imaging supplies, check out our homepage.