Product Reviews

HP reckons its latest 7400 family of scanners is something special. Apparently, they're fast and capable of scanning at exceptionally high resolutions. But scanner companies always say that, don't they? So to see if we're witnessing a revolution in resolution or just another scan scam, I put the biggest and most expensive of the 7400 range through its paces.

Scanners in the 7400 series have two heads - the part of the device that actually does the scanning. One can sample image information at 2,400 dots per inch (dpi), and this is certainly an impressive statistic. Our new Top 50 scanner can recognise only 1,200dpi - and this is still high enough for quality colour images.

But the trouble is, as you increase the resolution at which you're scanning, the time it takes the machine to complete its task begins to take longer. It's for this reason that HP packs a second scan head. This one operates at 600dpi, and is intended to be used when quality isn't the prime concern.

An automatic paper feeder is the next unusual feature of the HP. Fully stacked, it can handle 50 sheets of paper and will make digital filing a doddle. If you intend using optical character recognition,

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the HP will take the donkey work out of scanning vast amounts of data.

HP supplies ReadIris 6.0 OCR software, which also works well with bulk scanning. In testing, it managed to turn an A4 page of print into a Word document in 55 seconds, only five seconds longer than the manufacturer claims. And the sheet feeder can manage 15 sheets a minute if you're interested in using the scanner together with your printer as a photocopier.

The 2,400dpi resolution comes into its own when scanning transparencies. Results are excellent, and the system handles slides and negatives with equal ease. The exactness of its colour matching was particularly noteworthy. The process is complete in under a minute too - excellent, when you consider the colour depth and quality of the results.

The traditional Achilles' heel of scanners has been the time it takes to do a preview scan. As a rule, the machine warms up and generates a low-resolution scan. From this you select the part of the image you're really interested in. To save time, the HP intelligently flips into its 600dpi mode here and carries out a pre-scan in just 5 seconds.

HP makes much of its one-touch scanning to applications in its blurb for the 7450C. You can, for example, scan a document straight to e-mail at the touch of a button. And testing revealed that the company was true to its word.

The ScanJet 7450C is a great scanner. Its twin head scanning is far from a gimmick, saving time and generating excellent results. The feeder is a boon and the transparency adapter is a bonus. The problem is, the HP costs five times as much as our new Top 50 scanner, the Agfa SnapScan e26. With that in mind, the ScanJet 7450C should only be considered if you desperately need the extra features.