Canon CanoScan Lide 700F review

Nowadays, you're more likely to find a scanner stuck to the top of a printer, but there's still a market for standalone devices.

The CanoScan Lide 700F is the latest compact home scanner from Canon. A slim device, it packs in plenty of features for its £90 price tag.

The 700F features Canon's CIS sensor technology, with a 9600 optical resolution for film and 4800dpi for photos. The device is powered through its USB cable, so there's no external power brick, which is actually more useful than you might first imagine. The scanner also has an ingenious stand that allows it to be used vertically so it takes up less space on the desktop. If you've got room to accommodate a scanner however, the more traditional flat to the surface arrangement is available.

The scanner bed cover can be folded back to allow for unusual or bulky items to be scanned, too. In addition, the Canon comes with a film unit for 35mm negatives and slides. The six-frame adaptor clips over the scanning bed and there's a backlight unit, which you move from frame to frame. It's not as elegant as the automatic alternatives, but it's good enough for the odd scan. The 700F itself is lightweight, though it feels sturdy and has reassuringly solid construction.

The Lide 700F is supplied with the Canon MP Navigator software to operate the scanner's various functions and a copy of ArcSoft PhotoStudio for editing and photo management. Canon has done a good job with the software and it's simple to use.

If you're only after a system that allows you to click a button and not have to think about it, then the CanoScan Lide 700F is just about perfect. Getting from nothing to a saved file is genuinely a matter of a few clicks. If you'd like a bit more control, then it's there too. However, there's not much manual control, so you'll want to use the Photoshop plug-in or open the driver itself if you want advanced scanning options. The Canon driver has built-in OCR and we found it relatively accurate, though even with a fairly simple typed letter there were more errors than we'd have liked. Overall though, the software is excellent.

Scan performance was very good, with fast results across the board. It took just 25 seconds to scan a full page of text and 40 for a 300dpi full A4 scan. The Canon is capable of automatically selecting multiple images and scanning them separately. In our test we put three 6 x 4in photos on the bed and scanned them in one go. With processing time included, the whole operation took just 38 seconds; an impressive result. Our 35mm scans were just as speedy with a 1200dpi scan of a single frame taking 39 seconds.

The Canon has built-in scratch and dust removal, but we weren't that impressed with its efforts in the simple scanning mode. In advanced scanning mode results were much more impressive, though you shouldn't place too much faith in the system as it only recovers minor scratches. It should also be noted that dust and scratch removal extended scan time to two minutes 30 seconds. So, if you have a lot of negatives or slides to archive it'll take a fair while.

We were impressed by the overall quality of the results from the Canon, and as that's what matters with a scanner this can only be a good thing. Subtle colour differences were picked out well and the overall accuracy of colours from the 700F was great. If you've got more mundane things in mind, you can rest assured that general image quality is just as good. We scanned a MacUser cover to see how well the Canon matched the real thing and found that it reproduced the image faithfully.