Samsung's Best HDTV's - Click Here
CNET editors' review
- CNET editors' rating: stars Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 09/23/2001
How much would you pay for a steadfast scanner? The Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 4400c's $149 price makes it one of the costlier budget scanners around. Its dual scanning heads and its handsome scanning quality help it earn its keep, and the clever extras that help you tackle scanning chores quickly make up for the device's mediocre scan speed. But the ScanJet 4400c's short warranty and broad-yet-shallow software bundle seem like a lot of skimping for the price.How much would you pay for a steadfast scanner? The Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 4400c's $149 price makes it one of the costlier budget scanners around. Its dual scanning heads and its handsome scanning quality help it earn its keep, and the clever extras that help you tackle scanning chores quickly make up for the device's mediocre scan speed. But the ScanJet 4400c's short warranty and broad-yet-shallow software bundle seem like a lot of skimping for the price.
Scans for everyone
Setup is fairly painless for the ScanJet 4400c, which is compatible with Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, and NT 4.0, plus Mac OS 8.5 to 9.1. Take your pick of parallel or USB ports (the scanner supports both) and you're up and running in a couple of minutes. HP includes a USB cable with the scanner, but parallel-port users must supply their own. The only included documentation, a quick-start guide, is downright skimpy, but HP's vast, online support library (which includes FAQs and a searchable or browsable troubleshooting section) will provide an answer should you run into any problems.
The 4400c's 19-by-12-inch footprint doesn't leave a lot of room on your desk, and compared to sleek scanners such as the slim Canon CanoScan N670U, the ScanJet looks like a leviathan. However, part of that bulk is due to the scanner's two 48-bit CCD scanning heads--one 300dpi (dots per inch) head for fast, low-resolution images and one 1,200dpi head for the high-resolution fancy stuff. In CNET Labs' tests, the dual CCD heads delivered fairly swift performance. For example, a full-page color scan, taking around 30 seconds on average, makes the ScanJet 4400c the second fastest of the cheap scanners we've tested.
The 4400c's image quality was also pleasing to CNET's skeptical jurors. Image clarity and color matching were top-notch, as the scanner picked up subtle lines and tones correctly. Scanning at lower resolutions, the ScanJet faltered a bit at color saturation and contrast; while the colors looked true to life, the image looked somewhat pale overall. At higher resolutions, however, images were clear as a bell. Grayscale scans were not as good--shadows abruptly darkened or contained large patches of dark or light pixels.
Feature-rich
Along with strong image quality, the 4400c offers a cornucopia of features that make scanning quicker and easier. Buttons on the front of the unit send scans to your e-mail program or printer, automatically scan photos, and put the scanner in power-save mode.
To assist with the ScanJet 4400c's long list of services is a big software bundle--but in this case, bigger doesn't mean better. Kicking off the list is HP's PrecisionScan 3.1 Pro, which handles most of the scanning duties. Its feature list is long and includes built-in OCR, image editing, detailed scanner settings, and exotic functions such as scan-to-Web and scan-to-CD (if you have a CD-R/RW drive). But PrecisionScan could definitely handle a usability touch-up; some tools are hidden behind miles of menu commands. Continue reading
Most helpful user reviews
- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 32 reviews
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
Submit your review
