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Kodak ScanMate i940 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £230.35
inc VAT

There's a wide choice of document scanners at this price. Though capable, the ScanMate i940 isn't the best

A document scanner might sound like a niche product, but within a budget of £250 or so there’s a surprisingly wide choice of compact, portable devices with or without a built-in automatic document feeder (ADF). The ScanMate i940 is Kodak’s latest model. It’s larger than the most portable scanners we’ve seen, but its body incorporates a hinged lid that opens up and extends to form an ADF holding a useful 20 pages.

Kodak ScanMate i940 scan in progress
View a preview of pages as they’re scanned

The i940 comes without a case. With the lid closed it feels quite substantial, but we weren’t impressed by the amount of flexibility in the extended ADF, particularly in the very bendy panel under its adjustable paper guides. Kodak clearly has confidence in its build quality, however; a three-year warranty comes as standard. The scanner comes with a tiny mains power adaptor, and you can also power it over USB, albeit at a slower maximum scan speed.

Kodak ScanMate i940

Our tests with the i940 didn’t get off to a particularly good start, with the scanner performing slowly and its driver software experiencing inconsistent and frustrating delays. We experienced an application crash error message when installing it on our usual test PC, and this re-occurred when we rolled back and reinstalled in an attempt to cure the problems. Finally we switched to a different PC on which the software installed and subsequently worked without incident.

Kodak ScanMate i940 configuring blank page suppression
Unusually, the user needs to configure the blank page suppression feature

Kodak’s software integrates well with the scanner’s mode button, which allows you to choose from nine pre-configured and customisable scan profiles before hitting scan and having the results processed accordingly. We were impressed with the software’s ability to de-skew and re-orientate poorly-loaded paper, but blank page suppression isn’t enabled by default, and relies on the user choosing a level of content below which a page is considered blank; we found selecting 10 per cent worked well.

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Details

Rating ***

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview 10s
A4 document at 150dpi 10s
A4 document at 300dpi 14s
6x4in photo at 600dpi 52s
6x4in photo at 1200dpi N/A
Single 35mm negative at 2400dpi N/A
Single 35mm negative at max dpi N/A

Specifications

Scanner technology CIS
Max optical resolution 600dpi
Max interpolated resolution N/A
Output bit depth 24-bit
Maximum document size 216×1,524mm
Maximum transparency size N/A
Film formats accepted No
Function buttons 2
Scan head lock None
USB powered yes
Supported operating systems Windows XP/Vista/7 (Mac OS X not supported in this model, available in i940M)
Software included TWAIN/ISIS drivers, Kodak Smart Touch and NewSoft Presto! BizCard

Physical

USB cable included yes
Interface USB
Size 78x289x107mm
Weight 1.3kg
Power consumption standby N/A
Power consumption active N/A

Buying Information

Price £230
Supplier http://www.lambda-tek.com
Details http://graphics.kodak.com/GB/en

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