HP Scanjet G4010 review

Most scanners work by recording the amounts of blue, green and red light reflected back from whatever you place on the glass, and then combine them to create one full-colour image.

This large and pricy HP scanner is the first we've reviewed to use six colours. The Scanjet G4010's lid also contains a backlight, which lets you scan film slides or 35mm negatives.

HP provides a generous software bundle that includes an optical character recognition application, which lets you convert scanned text into an editable document. The complete bundle takes a while to install, but you can choose the programs you want.

Unfortunately, there's no escape from HP's TWAIN interface, which you have to use to make a scan directly from a Windows application, such as the included Photosmart image-editing software. It's much less user-friendly than the equivalent from competitors such as Canon or Epson. The interface closes after you capture each image and doesn't automatically remember the preview image or settings from the previous session. Making multiple scans of the same document is particularly tedious if you're scanning film, as the Scanjet automatically makes a regular, reflective preview before you can force it into film mode.

We weren't impressed with test scans of plain text documents, either. The white paper was tinged with blue in places where the lid hadn't held it fully flush with the scanner's glass. Scans of photos were far better though, with rich colours, high contrast and faithful detailing.

This scanner has a very high resolution that lets it capture a lot of detail from film. You can load negative strips directly into the lid, but the orientation markings don't make it clear which side should face upwards. Film scans were sharp with accurate colours, but the Scanjet couldn't differentiate between different dark shades in slide film. In one shot, dark blues in an evening sky were clumped together into grainy, artificial looking regions. For a scanner at this price that's unacceptable.