Canon Canoscan D1250U2F

It's not too long ago that USB became the standard interface for scanners, as it is faster than the parallel interface and doesn't require a separate interface card. Canon's new Canoscan D1250U2F is one of the first to use the much faster USB 2.0.

Inside, the Canoscan uses a charge-coupled device scanning element rather than the contact image sensor that we're used to seeing in Canon scanners. This improves the depth perception of the scanner, which is capable of a top resolution of 1,200dpi at 48bits internally, outputting 24bit colour.

Canon supplies a two-port Adaptec USB 2.0 card for your PC, which saves you around £50. Software consists of a full copy of Omnipage Pro 9.0 for optical character recognition as well as a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is a cut-down version of Photoshop.

On top of this you also get Twain drivers, which enable you to acquire images from the scanner in any Twain-compatible software. On the front of the scanner are three quick-scan buttons as well as one on the top of the lid. You also get a film holder for scanning negatives and slides.

Performance is a major selling point of this scanner, as USB 2.0 offers a much faster interface between the PC and the scanner. In our tests the D1250U2F was around three times faster when connected to a USB 2.0 interface compared to standard USB 1.1.

Scanning an A4 photo at 600dpi, for example, took 39 seconds on USB 2.0 compared to one minute 56 seconds on USB 1.1. Quality is also very good with vibrant colours and sharp details.

Our only complaint is the fairly high price but, if you need your scans quickly and don't want to sacrifice quality, the Canoscan could be for you.

Contact: Canon www.canon.com