HP Scanjet 3970

With nearly a dozen Scanjets on the market, HP leaves few flatbed scanning gaps unfilled. The Scanjet 3970 sits at the top end of the home user category, but could easily fit in with a small office setup when quality matters more than sheer throughput.

Looking brighter than the usual dull grey HP slabs, this scanner features 2400dpi optical sampling with the help of HP's dual-sensor CCD system.This uses a pair of staggered CCD arrays to achieve true 2,400dpi capture in one pass without the need for expensive, high-density optical hardware. Lab tests reveal good resolution and accuracy results, comparable with pricier scanners.

Four quick-task buttons are provided at the front. These are icon-labelled for scan, scan to printer, scan to web and memories disc (scan to CD archive), but can be customised. The latest version of HP's scanning driver and imaging software, which includes image correction, file management and album printing, is friendly and easy to use. The automatic enhancement feature doesn't always produce good results, so we tended to leave it switched off.

A small transparency lamp is built into the lid complete with a slot for sliding in a strip of 35mm negatives, of which it can scan two at a time. This is so much simpler than using the various lamp contraptions offered with some other Scanjet models that we wish they all did this. There isn't even any transparency holder to lose.

Image scanning, especially for 35mm negatives, produces excellent results, while the inclusion of Readiris Pro 8 turns the Scanjet 3970 into a surprisingly powerful OCR solution. As long as you don't expect scanning to be fast, the Scanjet 3970 deserves to be a real crowd pleaser.

Contact: HP 08705 474747
www.hp.co.uk

Specifications:

• 2,400dpi (dual sensor) max resolution
• 48bit
• 37sec quoted single A4 scan time
• Readiris Pro 8 (OCR)
• 3.29kg
• 472 x 298 x 90mm (w x d x h)
• USB2