HP ScanJet 5470C

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Resolution	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Versatile, sturdy and reliable, excellent quality images
Disadvantages:	pricey, perhaps a bit bulky

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

With a resolution of up to 2400 x 2400 dpi, 48-bit colour and an XPA transparency adapter included, this is an excellent quality A4 flatbed colour scanner that I would recommend for either home or business.

Transparencies, plain paper or cardboard, bulk objects (books etc.), film (35 mm negatives and slides), it can scan virtually anything…

The quality of the scans is excellent, with very good colour sensitivity, and the process itself is quite fast (it gives you a preview in few seconds, and you can do about two full A4 pages / min).

This scanner has both parallel and USB ports, and they both work equally well under Windows95 and 2000 too. I have used these two operating systems only, but apparently the scanner works with other versions of Windows as well (and I think even with Apple MacOS - anyway, it’s best to double check that before you buy…).

Installation is pretty straightforward and the supplied HP Precisionscan Pro 3.1 software helps you to get anything you could want from a scanner… The separate HP Scanjet Copy Utility bit of software can transform your scanner into a photocopier, and it gives you control over the number of copies (up to 99), brightness, quality of printing and even zoom (25-400%); you might want to do that only if there is no photocopier around, otherwise you’ll soon find out that this luxury costs you dear; and works slower too, of course… so be warned! …

As for the additional software one might need, I sometimes use it with SimpleOCR 3.0, a simple but pretty good OCR software (and free as well) that can be found on the web. For photo editing, I use Photo Shop, but with so many options around, I guess that’s just a question of personal preferences.

On the front panel there are few one-touch buttons designed to make scanning a breeze: they can be programmed to fire up specific applications (MS Word, Powerpoint, Acrobat Exchange, Image etc) and to scan-and-insert automatically; an LCD screen keeps you updated with status messages. Anyway, after playing with those buttons for a while, I’ve realized that it is very easy and more convenient for me to use directly the main application (HP Precisionscan Pro 3.1 software), that offers much more control over the size and quality of the scans.
Still, if you want to, you can use the "share-to-Web" button to post your images to photo-sharing Web sites, you can make a photocopy of your document via your printer or you can email photos with the "e-mail" button.

I have this printer for more than a year now, and one of the things I appreciate most is the XPA transparency adapter (which you can use to scan both slides or 35mm negatives). I normally use it to digitise my slides collection; it works great, and the quality of the images is just incredible…

The lid on the top of the scanner can be removed, so you can scan bulky things (all with manual load), but the scanner has also a port for ADF (Automatic Document Feeder - to be purchased separately), in case you are currently scanning loads of A4’s.

At around £130 that I’ve paid, it is definitely not cheap, but in the end it’s the scanning-quality you are paying for. Of course, if you just want to scan photos to upload them on the web or to have them as 6x4 inches printouts on glossy paper, I guess you’ll be better off with a £60 scanner… but if you’re into more serious business, you might want to consider this one…
As for other disadvantages, I find it a bit bulky for an A4 scanner, at least compared to other scanners on the market.

Considering all the aspects presented here, I think that HP Scanjet 5470c is a very reliable and extremely versatile colour A4 scanner; if you are looking for high quality scanning, this is one you should have on your shortlist...

Thanks for reading this!