First Scanner a Hit!
Written: Aug 16 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: good quality scans, powered through USB
Cons: standard software good, not great
The Bottom Line: a good quality scanner at a reasonable price
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| fuse's Full Review: Canon CanoScan N670U Flatbed Scanner |
My old HP inkjet printer finally died, and that coincided with a gift certificate to Best Buy for $250 from a credit card company reward program.
I had seriously thought about getting an all in one inkjet from HP, until I went to Best Buy and started playing around with all the printers, all-in-ones, and scanners.
I had to really weigh the value of the all in one versus the individual scanners and printers. I was going to get much better quality individual products.
I decided on the Canon N670U, which at the time was $99. The next scanner up was $199, and I wanted a decent printer, and this being my first scanner, I was not sure how much I was going to use it anyway.
The biggest advantages of the N670U are its size, and that fact that it is USB powered. I believe it is less than an inch thick- it can be used on its side with a stand that comes with it, but I have never have seen the point.
The scanner came with 3 software packages- ScanGear Toolbox, PhotoStudio 2000, and PhotoDeluxe Home Edition.
I'm not really that into digital studio work, but I find that the features of each package are effective but basic. There are features like red-eye reduction, smoothing, sepia tones, color to black and white, fun stuff like blur and flip and rotate- not professional, but more than I use for most of what I do, which is using the scanner as a copier or to digitize analog camera photos.
The scanner itself will take a 1200dpi image, which are generally too large for my small hard drive. Quality ranges from 75dpi to 1200dpi, with decent granularity in between (100, 150, 180, 200, 300, 360, 400, 600).
I had some fun with my son by scanning in his picture, flipping it, and merging the original with the flip to make it look like he was holding hands with himself- an interesting discussion followed too long to capture here :-)
When making copies, the scanner is high enough quality to show the flaws in the original if you do not scan it at a sufficiently high enough rate- I copied a home floor plan from the builder's original at 300 dpi, only to have my copy turn out to have lots of white pixels polka-dotting thick "black" lines.
Installation of the scanner was easy, just plug in the USB port and go. Software installation was also trivial, but the software that comes with the N670U may not be the long term image software you want to work with.
While I was initially very excited about the scanner and used it quite often, I find that it mostly collects dust these days. This is not fault of the scanner or a reflection of its quality, merely how it is used in our household- infrequently. It is great to have when you need it (I won't go so far as to say indispensable), but with digital cameras, I usually go direct to the PC now and bypass the scanner altogether.
On the flip side, scanners are so cheap these days that if you can skip going to a movie or two, or resisting buying one video game, there is no reason not to have one "just in case". I can think of quite a few occasions where I was glad we have the scanner.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
Interface: USB
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Epinions.com ID:
fuse
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Location: East Coast
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 3 members
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