HP ScanJet G4050 Photo Scanner

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	good quality scanning
Disadvantages:	software is rubbish, can take for ever to scan an image

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I bought myself this to scan various things (old photos, documents and some sheet music) and this does the job pretty well. It was a bit on the expensive side but I needed something that would give me good quality and I could trust that it would work well so I went for HP as they are well known for good quality products.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

It can scan at up to 4,800 dpi (dots per inch)
It has 96 bit colour
It has a 216x311mm scanning screen
Connects by USB
It is 303x508x108mm (wxdxh)
It weighs 5.2 kg

So it can give you very good quality, it gets a lot of colours, it's got a decent sized scanning screen, it's pretty big and it's not a light weight utility. There is nothing in there to put me off though because I still bought it.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT IT

Scanners have been dying out because they are getting beaten by MFDs (multi-functional devices) because they scan and print it out straight off with very good quality and work as photocopiers. You can pick up a scanner for very little now but they don't have very good quality but this scanner does so it's good for me. This scanner is the first to arrive with two lamps instead of one which means it gets a much wider range of colours and better quality. Having two lamps means it takes two readings and then combines them giving much better and accurate colours in the final image. I was able to pick this one up for about £130 which is pretty expensive but I was willing to pay that much.

SIZE MATTERS

It's a pretty bulky machine nothing that you can sit in a small space. You will need a good amount of space as it is a pretty bulky thing. It is well built and if it does happen to drop off you desk it won't break (I know this from experience and thank god it didn't break). It is very solidly built and the solid hinge at the lid will definitely stand the test of time. It has four shortcut buttons on the top for quick access to scan, film scan, copy and scan to PDF functions.

TAKE YOUR TIME

This isn't a very speedy machine for scanning. It can do a small photo at 200 dpi in 8 seconds which is pretty fast but when you add on 20 - 25 seconds. When you up the quality the time increases by very large amounts. I have ended up waiting very long amounts of time and sworn a lot because it takes for ever and I really don't like that at all. I now just leave it running and I watch the TV for a while then come back hoping it has finished. It is the second lamp and the six colour mode which pushes the time up but I use that for most photos I scan. If you take these modes off the times do drop by significant amounts though.

SIX COLOUR MODE

Six colour mode: what does it actually do? When I first saw this I thought oh so what just another name for something so they can up the price. Boy was I wrong. This gives much more colour depth but it really depends on the quality of the photo you are scanning how good the outcome is. I'm sure this will catch on and all scanners will have this technology soon. I do hope that scan times will speed up though and I am sure they will.

DUST AND SCRATCH REMOVAL

This is something else I thought was just a load of rubbish but once again I was wrong. This pretty much repairs scratches and removes dust from photos. So when you scan them the program will change parts of it to make it seem undamaged and you have a pretty much perfect image on your computer. It doesn't repair the original image but you can print off a good one. Once again, the time for scanning goes up though.

YOU CALL THAT SOFTWARE

A huge let down for me was the old software it is supplied with. It really does need updated as it just looks old and pretty rubbish. It's a let down when you spend a lot on this and you start the program and you look at it and think that they don't really care and didn't finish it off. If the software was more up-to-date then it would finish off the package and round off unfinished parts. It just feels like they put the effort in but then got bored and didn't do anything with the software.

IT'S STILL GOOD THOUGH

Even though the software sucks and it can take an age for a scan to finish with all the extra features, it is still very good. Great quality and does what I wanted it to. It is pretty expensive so if you aren't going to use all the extra features then get something cheaper.