Canoscan FB121OU

Small, light and sleek, this is the design antithesis of the Umax Powerlook 1100. The emphasis is on simplicity of use, and from the USB port on the rear to the one-touch scan button on the front this is a good looking, functional piece of kit.

The optional transparency adaptor is so slim and lightweight you could easily mistake it for the document cover it replaces. Removal of the protective cover, however, reveals a 5in x 4in diffuser light that illuminates the slides from above.

Scangear CS-U, a TWAIN plug-in, provides access to the scanner from your image editor. The TWAIN module has two modes: simple and advanced. With the first you choose from a selection of document types - colour photo, line art and so on - set the paper size and image source, preview, crop and scan. Advanced mode allows you to set the colour mode, output resolution and scaling, as well as providing image pre-processing options.

At its maximum optical resolution of 1200 x 2400, fine detail looked good but, as you'd expect from a scanner costing a quarter of the price, it was inferior to the Umax. Quality of transparency scans was terrific at the larger sizes, but really quite poor from 35mm originals. This might be something to do with the holder, which is fiddly to say the least.

The bundled Scangear toolbox application provides a desktop button bar that gives one-touch processing for a variety of destinations. You can set colour mode, resolution and so on in each button's preferences and nominate one to activate when the start button is pressed.

Despite the bandwidth limitations of USB, even big scans are completed fairly quickly. A slightly undersized A4 RGB page at 300dpi, producing a 22Mb file, took one minute and 10 seconds.

Contact:
Canon 0121 666 6262
http://www.canon.co.uk