Epson Perfection V100 Photo review

The Epson scanners we've reviewed in the past have all been conventionally arranged, with a lid that's hinged at the back and opens away from the user.

The Perfection V100 Photo's lid is hinged at the right and opens from left to right. This means you need less space above the scanner to open the lid, but there's no other clear advantage. The V100 is squarer and less attractive than other recent Epson scanners, such as the Perfection 4490 Photo.

Despite its unusual arrangement, this is a fairly conventional scanner. It has a high optical resolution of 3,200x9,600dpi and a built-in backlight for scanning film, so it's fairly well specified for the price. Epson supplies a reasonable software bundle that includes ABBYY FineReader optical character recognition (OCR) software and ArcSoftfs PhotoImpression image-editing package. The setup program lets you choose which components to install and works fairly quickly. There's no head lock to release, so once you have installed the software you can connect the USB cable and begin.

The V100 uses the same TWAIN software as other Epson products. It's a particularly well-designed interface with three modes suited to different levels of experience. Many users will end up selecting the Professional mode, which gives the highest level of control over scanning while still managing to be easy to use. Itfs a refreshing change from the frustrating interface supplied with HP's inkjet multifunction devices and scanners.

This scanner completed our timed tests reasonably quickly. With the scanning lamp already warm, a preview of an A4 document took 13.5 seconds to complete, and a 150 dots per inch (dpi) scan took 14 seconds. As we'd expect, it was slower at higher resolutions, taking 51.5 seconds to capture a 6x4in photograph at 1,200dpi. Loading film into the supplied adaptor is easy as it clearly marks the correct orientation, but the thin retaining clips in the slide film mounts look a little fragile. At 2,400dpi the V100 took one minute and nine seconds to scan a single 35mm frame.

Our plain paper documents were accurately exposed, with colours faithful to the originals. Photos seemed a little dark, but it's easy to correct this before committing to a final scan. Even at its default auto-exposure, the V100 preserved the full range of light and dark shades from a variety of originals.

A scanner needs sharp focus to make the most of a high optical resolution, but we felt that the V100fs images were a little soft. This was most evident along regions of high contrast, such as black text on a white background, and was visible even at moderate resolutions. The driver's unsharp mask function, which is enabled by default, helped to improve the results, but they still weren't perfect.

Despite this limitation, the V100 is quick and produces much higher-quality images than most other affordable scanners.