This is the 3rd Visioneer scanner I've owned. They are ALL quirky. But let's get the good out first.

The scanner is easy to use, and I like the slide and negative scanning features. The digital quality is adjustable, so you can do something fast and low-quality for a quick email, or you can do a high-resolution scan for a vintage photo you want to have forever. I've even taken huge pictures and scanned them in 4 sections (too big for the scanner) and pasted them together successfully (did the pasting together in Photoshop).

The editing features are convenient and fun if you don't want too much. I don't generally like the auto-adjust feature, but the manual one is good. You can adjust only color, only brightness, etc., and to the degree you want.

You can highlight, add text, and other basics. It's helpful when scanning a document to PDF to be able to highlight areas of importance w/o highlighting the original. Adding text to photographs is simple. The ability to select PDF, TIFF, JPG, and other formats is simple and convenient.

I rarely use the one-touch option. I like the control available from scan to scan using the PaperPort Scan Manager. That's how I do the majority of my scanning, using their PaperPort (included) software.

The bad:
Slides! No control. On their website, under the 9420 area, they suggest scanning slides at 2400 dpi. That would be nice. That's where I scanned them on my old Visioneer Scansoft PaperPort scanner. Unfortunately, the software won't allow me to go above 1200 dpi on the custom settings. The best pre-set setting they offer is 1600. So, you're out of luck there. When I called tech support, the guy told me it was a limitation in the PaperPort software and said to scan using the One-Touch menu. So we hung up, and, good luck - there's no One-Touch option for slides. Thanks a lot, tech support.

The other problem with slides: If you don't have 35mm slides, it's going to take you a lot longer to get your slides done. They have it preset to a certain size scan, and even though they offer a "custom" area for all the settings, you can't change the dpi any higher than 1200, and you can't adjust the size of the scan. So my parents' old instamatic slides have to be positioned so that I can select which areas to cut off in the scan, and then I have to cut the excess manually after every scan. It's a pain, and a long process. If the slides weren't so important to me, I wouldn't waste my time. But some things are too precious, so I put up with the headache. (If I had a mint, though, I'd be buying a Nikon Coolscan 4000. Wow! Or I'd just hire someone else to do all this for me!!)

So, as you can tell, I wasn't too thrilled with tech support, either. I would say that at least they offer it, but what good is it if the techies can't even give you accurate information? Maybe I just got a bad apple.

As I said, this is my 3rd Visioneer scanner. I saw someone posting about the power supply. That's why this is my 3rd. My second, the power supply went out. Was working one second, and the next, nothing. This one, so far, has been ok (knock on wood). I might go get my old one out, though. It's slide scanning capabilities were better, and maybe the power supplies are interchangeable. I never checked.

I have not scanned negatives with this unit yet, so I can't comment on that. No problems with the last one, though, where I scanned a number of slides with good results.


For the price and the things I use it for, this scanner has been fine. The problems arose when I started scanning slides again, which I had not done since purchasing this one. I've had it for a couple years without any real problems other than their quirks - telling me the scanner optical module is locked when it isn't, the driver suddenly being unfindable until reboot (not after an update; just random), things like that. Minor annoyances considering the price. But I might pay more next time for a more reliable scanner. It might pay for itself in the time it saves me with my slides.

If I think of anything else important, I'll come back and update.

Amount Paid (US$): 80
Interface: USB