Roundup: Scanners : Epson Perfection V30
3. Epson Perfection V30
Epson V30 vs. PX700W
Epson's PX700W is a multifunction printer that specialises in photo printing. It includes a scanner and a copier, but sells for the same price as the Perfection V30.
When we tested the PX700W, we noted that it had a good scanner, although the color handling could be improved. The V30 does better; colors are more accurate, as is contrast. The V30 also has four hotkeys to scan your document directly to a PDF or send it as an e-mail.
The V30 is a CCD scanner with a maximum optical resolution of 4800 dpi. Compared to CIS scanners, CCD models have the very small advantage of being able to capture raised details on the surface of a document.
The embossed cover of a book jacket would be a little blurry on a CIS scanner, but looks perfect on a CCD scanner. That can be useful if you want to use your scanner as a way of taking photos of objects you want to sell online, but any digital camera will perform exactly the same function.
On sale at the same price as the Canon LiDE 700F, the V30 can't scan negatives. It also requires a separate power supply, as well as the USB connection to the computer. (Canon's scanner only uses the latter). To compensate for the loss of these two features, we were expecting that Epson's scanner would produce more accurate colors, especially after we found several problems with the 700F's color handling.
The scanner has a reserved look, with four buttons on the front giving fast access to certain features, such as scanning a document and e-mailing it directly as an attachment.
For our tests, we used the driver's professional mode, but eventually decided turn off all of the automatic correction modes, like adjustments in sharpness and contrast. We set gamma to 2.2.
Its energy consumption is worth noting: 12.3 while active and 4.4 W when in standby. It's not going to cause your electricity bill to rocket, but we would have preferred it to use less power when not working.
Speed
- Perfection V30 Flatbed...
At higher resolutions, the V30 did better than Canon's 700F with a stamp scanned at 2400 dpi in around 40 seconds, compared to over a minute and a half.
Quality
We were hoping that this V30 from Epson would produce better results than Canon's 700F because they're both available at the same price, but Canon offers more features. That's exactly what we found, which unfortunately doesn't make choosing between the two of them any easier. Epson beats Canon in terms of accuracy, so on the one hand the quality is better, but on the other, there could be more features.
| Original | Scanner |
96 dpi What to look out for: Orange tones that are hard to reproduce, details in the hair, skin tones. | 96 dpi The orange areas are handled rather well, without too much red--at lot less than usual, anyway. Details in the hair are clearly visible. |
300 dpi What to look out for: Details in the hair, skin tones. | 300 dpi The level of detail on the face is still satisfactory, despite a slight lack of gradients and sharpness in the hair. |
600 dpi What to look out for: You should be able to see eyelashes and eyebrows. | 600 dpi All of the details are blurry. There are no details on the ears. At this point, you need to think about reactivating the automatic correction options. |
The V30 also has a 'sharpness' mode. The results aren't as surprising as on the LiDE 700F, but individual strokes and white areas are noticeably better. Blurriness disappears.
| Without sharpness mode | With sharpness mode |
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Another advantage that this Epson scanner has over its Canon rival is that turning on sharpness mode does not affect the shade of the red ink in our stamp. That's perfectly logical, of course, but with Canon's scanner, it does move.
It's worth noting that although sharpness and the presence of detail is very important, having accurate colors is indispensable. In this test, the top row represents the scanned image, while the bottom shows the ideal colors. Visually, the colors are pretty accurate, apart from the black.
The Epson scanner washes out blacks a lot less (but does add a slight green tinge) and respects the red and oranges tones to which the human eye is particularly sensitive.
Finally, without actually claiming to deliver performance appropriate for a professional photographer, the V30 does pretty well. It's a pleasant surprise, to find that its scans are better than some professional scanners whose tests we'll be publishing soon. It's also more accurate than our in-house professional scanner, which is two years old. To put it another way, until we find something better, we'll be using this one in the lab for a while.
| Epson Perfection V30 | |
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| Pros | Cons |
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The V30 is fast and has accurate colors. Even though some shades aren't quite right, the final result is acceptable.
When will we get the reviews of the pro scanners?
well thats kinda crap you say one of the entry level does better than the pro's, but then you dont mention which one. Is it not in this part of the review? And if not why?
We wanted to test a second unit of this pro scanner. We've done it yet. Same results. It's the Epson V500 Photo.
Butaze - I'll assume above you meant "We HAVEN'T done it yet"? I'm interested to see how these scanners match up against the higher-end photoscanners... I've had the top-model Canoscan (not the entry 700f you review) that I've been pretty happy with though it's getting older and probably due for a refresh.