Canon CanoScan Lide 400

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Canon CanoScan Lide 400	A4	4800 dpi	USB Type-C	48-bit Color or 16-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The first and what we consider to be the Best Canon Flatbed Scanner to buy in 2020 is the Canon Lide 400. The coolest thing about the Canon 400 as opposed to other brands is that it comes with a stand. Not only does it look really cool on your desk but it also saves you precious space. It has fast scanning speeds, for example at 300 dpi it takes about 8 to 10 seconds for a scan but when you increase the resolution to 600 dpi, it will take up to 35 seconds.

This Canon Flatbed Scanner has a CIS (Contact Image Sensor) that can produce an image resolution of 4800 DPI, plenty of pixels per inch to reproduce your photos in really fine detail. Canon say that with interpolation you can take it to 19,200 DPI but there is no logical reason to do that, interpolation doesn’t bring any new detail it just resizes the image. The depth of color is on par with the resolution, it scans at a 48-bit color depth when you scan in color and 16-bit when you do that in grayscale.

You can scan any paper size that is up to A4 format. This is part of the office scanners line for information management from Canon and it was optimized to scan office documents more than photos and photo books. You can connect this scanner to your Windows or Mac computer using its USB-C port and it is the same USB cable that also powers the scanner, you don’t need to use an extra AC Adapter. It is one of the very few flatbed scanners to be using the newest and fastest USB Type-C port. Canon provides TWAIN drivers available to download, so you can integrate this scanner with any scanning app.

One of the best scanner tips we can give you with this Canon scanner: It has a Z-lid that is supposed to be better with thicker materials and book scanning. Lift it when you have thicker books and the scanning process will go much smoother. This Canon Flatbed Scanner uses LED technology with no warm-up and minimal power consumption. It weighs about 3.6 lbs making it extremely light. The Epson scanners usually weigh twice as much and the design of the Canon scanners is the best in the business.

The software included with the scanner is: 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. I don’t know why Canon decided not to just ship the scanner with an ABBYY OCR license and instead went for a more complicated approach. The software that Canon provides digital ICE technology features for auto document fix that can remove scratch marks off the scanned images and also dust particles. These are things that people used to do in Photoshop years ago but now most scanning software can remove them. It also can synchronize with your favorite cloud storage like Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive or Evernote.

This flatbed scanner is compatible with all major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS and Linux. You’ll find more product information and all the details about product warranty and how to register your product on Canon’s website.

The direct competitor to this scanner is the Epson Perfection V39. They have almost exactly the same specs, it is just a matter of which software and design you prefer. For the Epson perfection V600 and Epson V550, Canon has no contender at this moment.

Canon CanoScan 9000F MKII

Product	Format	Optical Resolution	Connectivity	Color Depth	Price
Canon CanoScan 9000F MKII	A4	9600 dpi	Hi-Speed USB 2.0	48-bit Color or 24-bit Grayscale	Click for more info

The Canon 9000F MK II is kind of discontinued, but you can still find it on Amazon, sometimes new or sometimes renewed. But it is one of the Best Canon Flatbed Scanners ever made. The pixel density is and this is true: 9600 Dots Per Inch, optical resolution for film and 4800 dpi for photos and documents without any interpolation. This is a pro photo flatbed scanner that uses a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) sensor from back in the days when Canon did not mount the new CIS sensors. We always prefer the RGB color quality and vividness from the CCD sensors. It is like in eos dslr cameras, mirrorless cameras and professional camcorders. the megapixels can be the same but the image quality may be very different because of the sensors and lenses. You connect this scanner to your PC using a HiSpeed USB 2.0 port and you can scan any paper size that is up to A4 format. The scan speed is approximately 7 seconds for an A4 color document at a 300 dpi resolution.

This flatbed photo scanner has the ability to scan 35mm films and other formats of film scanning. It allows you to scan scan 35 mm film and negatives and also medium format. It uses the Fare Level 3 technology to apply some Digital ICE features for color photo enhancement like removing dust and removing scratches and also enhancing the colors from old photos. All of that is done using the provided photo editing software. You also get OCR technology with it, but it includes software that is proprietary. This is something that we don’t like about Canon Scanners as we believe that delivering a license for an ABBYY FineReader would have been the better choice for OCR software to convert scanned images to JPEG, TIFF and Bitmap files to searchable PDFs and Word Documents with editable text. The fact that it scans slides and negatives using its built-in transparency unit at 9600 DPI puts it in a class of its own because no other flatbed scanner from Epson can do that.

One very useful feature on this Canon professional scanner is the correction of inner binding shadow when scanning books. The scanner compensates for the difference in light that appears when you try to bend a book to flatten it on the scanner. You will also find 7 EZ Buttons that you can program with custom scanning functions. It has 1 Auto Scan Button which is perfect for when you are in a hurry and you don’t have time to set all the features. It uses a white LED lamp for backlighting.

The price is almost 8-10 times bigger than the one of the other two scanners here so in terms of business products and value for money, the Lide 400 looks much better, but it is worth it when you want to use it for professional photography and it proves to be a strong contender to the V800, Epson Perfection V850 Pro and Epson Expression 12000XL-PH models from Epson at this price point.

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 very similar with the Canon Lide 400 but with some small differences in scanner features. It is part of the same low-cost line of scanners for home and light business use. For example, the maximum scanning resolution is lower, just 2400 DPI optical compared to 4800 dpi. For text documents, that won’t make any difference but for high-quality photos, the scan quality might be a problem if you want to scan it and reprint it in large format. The Lide 400 is about 10-20% faster due its better image processor. This flatbed document and photo scanner has no business consumables so there is nothing to replace in it periodically and the maintenance upgrades come in the form of driver updates, not firmware. Like the 300, it is powered by USB like many other office products.

The CanoScan 300 scanner confirms what we always liked about Canon products, the design is always great. This color image scanner looks and feels better than its Epson counterpart.

It has programmable buttons on the front for scanning and copying. Yes, you can connect the scanner to a Canon office printers or home printers or even professional photo printers. As long as the drivers are properly installed and the IJ utility recognizes them you are good to go. It is not a film scanner so you don’t have a holder for film negatives or slides. You can find drivers for Windows and Mac and for related products along with the option for product registration on the Canon site.

If it were up to me, I would definitely pay the extra 25 dollars for the 400 because you get better and faster scanning.

What Canon Flatbed Scanner should I buy?

If you want the best value for money, you should buy the Canon Lide 400, that flatbed scanner has good resolution, good color depth and good software at an extremely low price. If you work in photography then you might want to consider purchasing a Canon 9000F MK II. They are quite cheap now on Amazon. Along with the Canon Canoscan flatbed scanners, Canon also makes the Canon Imageformula line of document scanners that have an automatic document feeder like the Canon DR-C225 ii, the Canon Imageformula R40 which has a wifi connection and will be quickly scanning documents at a rate of 40 pages per minute. You can also buy one of those and attach a flatbed unit accessory. If you decided that you actually need a portable scanner or a portable photo scanner, then the Canon P-215ii would be the best option. Canon also offers laser printers and all-in-one printer scanners that have a flatbed unit on which you can scan if you think that is a better fit. Epson also makes great flatbed scanners, like the Epson perfection v550 but also dedicated photo scanners like the epson fastfoto ff-680w high-speed photo scanner.