Canon CanoScan N670U

The Canon CanoScan N670/676U is a mid range USB flat-bed A4 scanner. I’ been around for nearly a year and is still in Canon’s current range. The scanner retails for about £60, but in March, I purchased a refurbished on for £45 (from Special reserve url: ukgames.com, though I bought it from a shop and not the website).

•Basic specs:
This is a mid range USB 1.1 (not the superior USB 2.0) CIS scanner capable of scanning at 600x1200 dpi (dots per inch) featuring 48bit input and 24 bit output.
It’s compatible with all windows versions (including Win XP if you use the Win 2000 drivers) and MAC it requires a USB port; that also supplies it with power, basically if your PC has a USB port, it’s good enough to handle this. Also 10 (min) - 200 (max megs of hard drive are required to install the scanner. The cable is about 1 meter long, which is acceptable.

The reason I bought this scanner was first of all because of it’s price relative to it’s quality. Secondly this scanner looks very sleek and attractive, it’s one of those slim ones, and it comes with a stand so it can rest vertically while scanning. It also has a “Z-lid” which on paper is very innovative as that means when scanning thicker items the cover wraps itself over the object to be scanned and you don’t put excessive pressure onto the cover. In practice, it’s pretty useless.

It also features some useless quickscan buttons on the front, which I doubt many people use as you are unlikely to get what you want. These allow you to scan the image, to email it, or to print it, better than not having them I suppose. You need to have the supplied software to make use of this though, and I am not going to waste my time with it. Also there is no 35mm negative/positive scanner as you would find with other scanners.

The package comes with Arcsoft PhotoStudio 2000 (Editor), Arcsoft Photobase (Album programme), ScanSoft Omnipage Pro (Text recognition software), and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Which is a very average line up (none of which I installed; except Omnipage, which I have only used once, plus I have the full version of acrobat anyway).

•Installation
The manual (which is also for the N1240U; the old top of the range Canon home scanner) is pretty good, it guides you through the installation process step by step, and I had no trouble with it. Also you find the one year warranty, which is pretty standard (even with the “approved” refurbished one I got).

•Operation
The most important thing I think is a scanner that does what you wish to do, and efficiently without stressing your PC too much, and by in large, the N670U achieves it. The interface (i.e. what you see after you click scan on whatever programme you use) is pretty standard.

First of all you choose the media you are scanning, you can choose from B/W, Grayscale, Colour Documents, Colour Photos or Text Enhanced. That’s a pretty small choice compared with say the Epson one which has about a dozen, but never mind that. (Obviously options are saved after you leave the programme).

The first thing you do is click preview, this starts a preview scan which takes about 15 seconds (and maybe a calibration which takes a minute), you choose the resolution of the resulting image, from 75 to 2400 dpi and then play around with some more advanced settings if you wish to (like clearing bits of dust etc).

Then you choose the section you wish to scan, the scanner can do that automatically if you wish, just click the align button as many times as required. With this scanner, you can also put more than one item into the bed, and it will automatically align them and scan for you, pretty clever.

Scanning a full colour A4 page takes about one and a half minute, either way, longer than an Epson scanner. During scanning you can use other programmes (well you’d expect that with a Pentium 3 with 320 megs of RAM right?), but it takes a few goes to see the progress, the interface is fiddly!

Overall the operation feels second class, especially compared to an Epson scanner, but on the flipside, it’s miles better than the Afga scanner I used a while back. I’d love to know how good USB2.0 scanners are though…

Another thing that annoys me a little is the noise generated by the scanner during its operation, instead of an efficient buzz, it sounds like a painful push, something you just don’t want a machine so beautifully delicate to go through. The product is pretty solid but because of it’s size, there’s just the unjustified feeling of fragility.

•Scan quality
I believe that all scanners can scan images of the same quality. To be honest, you will rarely scan images at over 300dpi, and if you ask the scanner to scan reasonable size items at over 700 dpi (sometimes 600 dpi) it says that the object is too large to scan at that resolution, so something to bear in mind if you are solely purchasing a scanner to scan large items at high resolutions.

•Conclusions
That’s about all you need to know really. Overall for £45 this is as good a scanner as you can get. This is not the best scanner in the 600x1200 dpi range, but you can do a lot worse, and looks do matter at the end of the day.

The scanner is very good, but it’s let down by the fact that it can be better in many departments, it can scan a little faster and also the interface just lacks a few options here and there and is a little fiddly.

However I would not pay the retail price of £60 for this, I would simply take a risk on another brand (Packard Bell do a similar looking/spec one for £45 retail) or just spend a little more to get an Epson one.

My scanner is an official refurbished one, and there are lots of these about, this is worrying for consumers who may wish to purchase a brand new one, now I don’t know if this is common, but it’s certainly worrying.

For more info visit the Canon website

Recommended alternatives: CanoScan N1240U or the newer version of that if you can get it for less than £80, or the Epson perfection series which costs a little more.