Epson V300 Photo scanner

The Epson V300 scanner is designed for both paper and film scanning – it's a standard flatbed scanner, with a lid that's hinged at the side to allow documents to be inserted.

But the lid also conceals the light unit that's required for scanning negatives and slides. That's handy – older scanners required the user to switch lids when scanning film, whereas the only thing to do here is remove a white plastic mat that conceals the top lamp when it's not in use.

It's a fairly slim unit that's solidly built, with only USB and power connections on the side, and four buttons on the top (for scanning to the printer, email or a PDF, and the power button).

Installation was a piece of cake – the supplied CD contains all the software required, including the fairly powerful but easy-to-use Epson Scan software, and some document management tools.

Scanning times can be slow: four slides at the maximum 13,000dpi and the highest colour setting took 32 minutes. That said, a more useful 2,400dpi scan of the same slides took only four minutes.

Results were impressive – scans were sharp and bright, although in most cases the colours were a little washed out and required some touching up. This can be done automatically in the Epson software and, when we switched it on, didn't add any time to the process, although at the same time the colour correction wasn't as good as it was when we adjusted it manually.

Paper scans were likewise slightly muted in colour, but were fast: a basic scan was a matter of just a few seconds.

The advantage a flatbed slide and film scanner has over a conventional film scanner is that it can scan four slides or six negatives in a strip at once, and in this case the software automatically recognises this and scans the images into separate files, which can cut down on scanning time if you're scanning whole films.

In all, the V300 Photo is capable, but if you're keen on top-quality pictures you'll have to take the extra time to touch them up. As an all-round home scanner, though, it's worth the money.