Umax Astra 3450 review

Buying a low-cost scanner is getting more confusing all the time.

There are so many models and manufacturers flooding the market with substandard, flimsy bits of plastic and glass that it can be extremely difficult for the uninitiated to work out who's who, what's what and - more importantly - which one to buy.

Fortunately, as we've discovered over the years, as long as you stick with a reputable manufacturer, you're halfway there. Agfa's SnapScan 1212u, for instance, has been our recommended scanner since February. Umax has also always been in contention, especially in the budget arena. Its Astra 3450 aims to steal the budget crown.

It's clear from the outset that this scanner aims to make things as simple as possible. Connection is via USB, so there's no need to go opening the case of your PC to install a SCSI card, and installation is about as simple as it gets - just stick the CD in, install the software, reboot, connect the scanner and you're away.

On the front lip of the scanner you'll find four large rubber shortcut buttons that automate various mundane operations, such as sending your document to the supplied OCR ('optical character recognition') application, to e-mail or to fax. The Copy button does exactly what it says, while Scan can be customised to send an image to the application of your choice. All very handy, but the scanner software doesn't seem to have any kind of intelligence built in. When you use the shortcut buttons you end up with an image the full size of the scanner's plate, whether you put a photo or an A4 document in. This takes a lot of time and memory.

If you choose to use the Astra's TWAIN driver to acquire images directly from your photo editing application, you get much more control. The software's Beginner button keeps the interface clear of confusing clutter, with just a Preview button and four others for selecting the type of document, but it does at least give you the option of scanning just the area you need. The Advanced mode lets you experiment a bit, boasting every option you could reasonably ask for in a sub-£100 scanner. Everything from brightness, contrast and highlight/shadow controls to a tone map tool and 'de-screen' option are available.

We'd have thought that by now all manufacturers would have moved their scanners over to at least 1,200x1,200dpi resolutions, but Umax has decided to stick with the lower 600x1,200dpi with this budget image grabber. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though: it's far more important that a scanner has quality optics than simply a higher resolution. And the simple fact is that for most purposes - even enlarging standard snap-sized photographs by a factor of two for printing out on a modern inkjet printer - 600dpi is perfectly adequate.

The 3450 captures an impressive amount of detail from photographic prints. It matches the level of detail of Epson's Perfection 610 and Agfa's 1212u, but its colours are more balanced and accurate than from any other scanner under £100 we've tested. Speed is acceptable too, although not the quickest we've ever seen: the 3450 took 69 seconds to scan a standard photo, 165 seconds to scan a 10x8in enlargement at 600dpi, and 30 seconds to scan a page of A4 text at 300dpi.

The 3450 even comes with a transparency adapter as standard, which allows you to capture both positives and negatives. It works well, but the relatively low resolution is more noticeable when using it, and the lamp in the hood is just a little too bright, slightly washing out colours.