Mustek ScanExpress 12000P review

Considering their volume, most scanners are surprisingly light.

The Mustek 12000P is perhaps too much so: the horribly flimsy rear panel flexes alarmingly as you insert and remove cables.

This factor aside, it has a reasonable exterior. Although manufacturers are pretty limited in their options for making a plastic box look sexy, Mustek give it a go. A transparent green plastic fillet is set into one side of the lid, so you get a Blade Runner-style glowing light as the scanning head sweeps down a document - very cyber.

While nearly all modern software is supplied on CD-ROM, this isn't the case in this instance. The 12000P comes with no less than five installation floppies and a CD-ROM which you need to insert halfway through the routine - mind-numbing.

Once installed, the 12000P has a delightfully simple way of getting started. A sensor starts up the software whenever you open the lid. It can even be configured to automatically start scanning after a short delay, and the delay time and resolution are both user-definable. This could be a real time-saver for archiving or faxing in an office environment.

The most straightforward way to get your images into the computer is to use a TWAIN driver. All scanners are supplied with one of these. They're a form of scanning software that can be launched from any TWAIN-compliant application to control the scanning process and transfer the image directly into that application. Because TWAIN is an industry standard, most imaging software can use TWAIN drivers to capture images both quickly and easily - the popular Paint Shop Pro image editor is one such program. (Oh, and in case you're wondering, TWAIN stands for Thing Without An Interesting Name.)

Mustek's bundled TWAIN driver is better than most. Not only does it look good, but it won't bewilder you with a zillion controls because it hides the advanced ones behind dialog tabs.

Also included is an image-editing application that can be used in conjunction with the TWAIN driver. This one is called Ulead iPhoto Plus, and while it isn't the best of it's kind around, it does what it sets out to do quite adequately.

To test the all-round performance we used three different test scans: a high-quality colour photograph to check the overall realism and faithfulness, a special test target to check accuracy of colour and intensity, and a monochrome text scan to evaluate resolving power and focus.

With the sharp lines of black and white text, the Mustek ScanExpress 12000P excelled, with good contrast and super-sharp lines. Colour faithfulness wasn't quite as good - the reproduction was a little too gaudy. But in terms of photographic reproduction, the 12000P returned to the top of the tree, superbly capturing the colour, and in particular the detail, of our test photograph.

Generally, the more expensive scanners tend to put on the best show, but not exclusively so - there are a number of bargains whose quality belies their pricing. The Mustek ScanExpress 12000P is undeniably one of these. Coming in at a modest £129 on the street, it delivered the best image quality of all the scanners in our sub £150 group test.