The love of my life !!!! (Canon Canoscan N650U)

Member Name: lankmasta

Product:	Canon Canoscan N650U
Date:	10/07/01 (1011 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent looks, Excellent Quality

Disadvantages: Can Be slow

I love my scanner so much I had to spend 2 hours writing a review on it. I'm sure it's worth spending that long writing about your pride and joy.

Gone are the days when a flatbed scanner would consume a massive chunk of desk space. Witness Canon's CanoScan N650U, which barely exceeds the dimensions of a legal-size sheet of paper and stands a mere 1.3 inches high. What's more, it draws power from its USB interface, so there's no bulky power adapter. All told, the CanoScan series scanners can almost be categorized as "portable" flatbeds.

A quick-start guide walks you through the initial connection to a PC or a Macintosh, the installation of the CanoScan software, and your first scan. It also lists scan-resolution suggestions and extensive tech-support contact information. This is, however, the only printed documentation that's included--the rest is electronic. Canon commendably supplies online guides for all the bundled software, including third-party apps. There's also a helpful troubleshooting guide.

The push of a button on the CanoScan's front edge launches ArcSoft PhotoStudio 2000--though you have to select it from a pop-up menu each time--and Canon's streamlined, uncomplicated ScanGear acquisition driver. ScanGear accommodates novice and experienced users by offering simple and advanced modes, the latter providing manual control over everything from dimensions to gamma settings. In either mode, ScanGear can invert colors to create a negative, flip and rotate images, and automatically adjust the various tones.

What it doesn't do is remember cropping settings from one session to the next--a minor annoyance if you need to do multiple scans of the same photo or document. An auto-crop button is supposed to find an image's borders for you, but when we tested the feature on photos with lighter backgrounds, it would sometimes miss the edges and crop too close to the subject.
r>In terms of scan quality, the CanoScan proved an average performer, at least relative to other flatbeds in its class. Subjectively speaking, it did a respectable job with color reproduction, showing moderately saturated colors and relatively accurate skin tones. It did exhibit some slight misregistration problems--nothing that should stop you from buying the scanner, but important to consider if you need very sharp scans. Also, keep in mind that the N650U's software produces gaps in the individual color channels. They're not obviously seen in the final images, but may result in visible posterizing if you perform a lot of retouching on the images. However, if speed is what you're looking for, you'll be pleased to know that the N650U performs near the top of its class.

The CanoScan makes a fair amount of noise during preview and low-resolution scans, or anytime the scan head moves quickly. Ironically, it's virtually silent during high-resolution scans, when the sensor moves slowly. Plus, it requires practically no warm-up time before the first scan.

We particularly liked the CanoScan's double-hinged lid, which allows for the scanning of books and other large originals but doesn't come off like other flatbed lids we've encountered.

In addition to PhotoStudio 2000, a capable image-manipulation program, Canon supplies ArcSoft PhotoBase, which lets you create photo albums and turn them into slideshows. OmniPage Pro 9.0 adeptly handles OCR chores, while Canon's own ScanGear Toolbox provides one-click destinations (e-mail, printer, fax, and so on) for your scans. It's unfortunate that these tools aren't tied together as a single cohesive suite. However, they provide virtually all the functionality one could want from a scanner.