Pandigital One-Touch Scanner (PANSCN04)

I have been searching for a fast way to scan a large collection of photos.  While in Microcenter purchasing Christmas gifts, my wife noticed the Pandigital Photolink One-touch Scanner.  It was only $30.  At that price, I was very skeptical, since the $100 Xerox didn't work at all.  For $30, though, it was cheap enough
to take a risk.

When reviewing various scanners, you tend to get a feel where the problems occur.  For sheet feeding scanners like this one, a real fear is blurriness caused by the picture rotating.  This occurs when you don't feed the picture in straight and you adjust it while its scanning.  The next fear has to do with scanning directly to an SD card.  If you scan to an SD card, you never have an option to review the pictures.  This is also what makes scanning with devices faster.  After you scan one picture, you are ready to scan the other.  You don't have to worry about scanning areas, cropping or slight rotation.  The device should take care of that for you.

I decided to scan about 5 pictures, then check the image quality on a computer.  I was very happy with the results.  The scanner only scans at 600dpi, so don't expect super quality scans.  The guide that you put the picture against worked well, so there were no slight rotation problems.  It chose the correct scanning area.  My litmus test succeeded.

Years ago, my future father-in-law gave my then girlfriend a bag full of pictures.  I think it was a compromise on him buying her a scanner;  She was supposed to scan all the pictures.  She never did.  Eventually, she saw the pain I went through to scan all my high school pictures using a flatbed scanner.  It took me weeks, and a lot of the pictures were slightly rotated.  This discouraged her even further.  After my litmus test, I decided to scan her father's pictures.  I expected to spend an hour here and an hour there for a while to get them scanned.  There were 8 envelopes.  Some were single rolls while others were multiple rolls.  It took me about an hour and a half to scan ALL the pictures.  At that point, the $30 paid for itself already.  After scanning a picture, you only have to wait about a second to scan the next picture.  When I first started scanning, I tried to feed the next picture too fast.  The orange light blinked red to tell me it wasn't ready yet.  I found that if you move the just-scanned picture to a face down pile, that is enough time for the scan to complete.  When I say a second, I really do mean a second.  Once you get into the groove of scan, put into pile, scan, put into pile, you will find that you make progress really fast.  I am planning on flying to a family members house in the coming months.  I will be bringing the scanner.  The goal is to scan as many pictures as I can; hopefully the entire collection (well, the ones less than 5 inches wide at least).

There are some limitations for the scanner.  The one I got only accepts pictures that are 5 inches wide, max.  The box advertises supporting a max for 5x7, but it will support longer than 7 inches.  I think it just advertised that to make it easier to understand to the end user.  I had a 5 inch tall panoramic that scanned just fine.  I don't know the actual max length.  Its better for advertising to undersell than oversell.  600dpi is good enough quality to look at.  You can put it on a big screen TV if you have family members over to look at a bunch of them.  The device was designed so you can scan directly to the SD card that a digital picture frame uses.  I understand that a lot of people want higher quality.  At times, I want higher quality too.  This scanner is great for scanning your entire collection (that is less than 5 inches wide), so that you can more easily pick which pictures you want a scanned in a higher quality.  When someone asks for a higher quality, you can find the picture and scan it with your flatbed.

If you decide to purchase this product, I recommend that you do some price comparisons.  Normally I post the Amazon link directly to the product because it is the cheapest price.  In this case, I'm posting the Amazon link to show you what it looks like, and so you can read more reviews.  I purchased it from an actual store for less than 1/2 of the Amazon price.  I did not find it on their online site, though.  I tried doing a Google search and the price ranged from $30 on Ebay to $100 on Overstock.  Amazon was half way in between those prices.  The exact model I got was the PANSCN04.

I read through the reviews of the scanner on Amazon.  Most are positive.  I did not notice the grey line problem that a few reviews reported.  I did have to calibrate the device or use the protection sleeve so I don't know if that effects the scan.  Below is a Tiger Direct review of an older model that only supports 4 inches as opposed to 5 inches, but they are very close.