Microtek ScanMaker 3600

The 3600 doesn't look that different to most of the other budget flatbed scanners. It's not the smallest and it's certainly not the most stylish, but it breaks the rules with a colour depth of 42bit.

The bit depth is a measure of how many colours a scanner can detect. Most scanners are 36bit, which means they're capable of recognising more colours than your monitor can display. You may logically expect that a 42bit colour depth is a good thing. In fact, it's just a number, and you can't use it to accurately guess the output quality. Even with the highest numbers quoted on the box, if a scanner has poor quality optics inside, the final image will not be up to scratch.

The 42bit colour depth quoted is what the scanner sees. The information that gets sent back to the PC is at 36bit. That may sound like a bit of a con, but it isn't necessarily. The scanner looks at an image and converts what it sees into a signal that can be sent to the PC. During conversion, information is lost, but just how much depends on the quality of the scanner. If you scan at 36bit, you're never going to be able to send 36bits through to the PC - some of the information will always be lost. If you scan at 42bit however, you'll still be able to send the maximum 36bits of information through to the PC.

However, we were less than impressed with the 3600's output. There was nothing wrong with its scans as such, but there are other scanners in the same price range that produce better results.

One other niggle was the time it took to perform a scan. The device appears to scan at 300dpi, even when a lower resolution is set, and then it sends the image through at the lower resolution. This means that a scan at 150dpi took just as long as a 300dpi. An A4 page of black and white text took 60 seconds longer to scan than other similar scanners.

Contact Microtek 01908 317797