Umax Astra 2000U review

More often than not I found myself reverting to the scanner's automatic setting, but this didn't work in its favour either. It had a tendency to over-expose images, meaning that a small amount of image information in very light areas was lost. In fact, no amount of fiddling and tweaking could make the images scanned with the 2000U look as good as those produced more quickly and with less hassle on the Perfection, even at the same resolution. The level of detail captured was still very impressive, however.

Overall, it seems you get what you pay for with the Umax 2000U. While detail capture is as competent as you'd expect from a company with the pedigree and history that Umax has in the field, the control software is both clumsy to use and limited in terms of the features it offers. Unfortunately, the scanner's automatic settings don't help matters at all. True, at £84 it's a very tempting proposition, but I'd say that if you're going to buy a scanner then it's well worth doing it properly by paying the extra for the superior quality, speed and flexibility offered by the Epson Perfection 1200 Photo.

Author: Jonathan Bray