Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner

by Canon

Product Details

Product Manual [1.70mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00006AMSH
• Item model number: LiDE20
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #26 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Flatbed Scanners
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 27, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The CanoScan LiDE 20 USB flatbed scanner is one of the world's most compact flatbeds, yet it offers big performance and big savings. Just over an inch high, it packs all the features you need to scan images, copy documents, and e-mail your favorite photos, all with one-touch operation.

The LiDE 20 scanner is so intuitive and easy to use that first-time users can get expert results in remarkable color resolution up to 600 x 1,200 dpi and up to 48-bit depth with 281 trillion possible colors. The LiDE 20 scanner is small, but it can tackle the big jobs. The exclusive Z-Lid expansion top lifts one inch high and stays flat for scanning books and magazines. (Most other scanner covers lift only at an angle, often resulting in poor scans.)

Setup and operation are made easy by having one cable for both power and USB data; the scanner needs no extra AC adapter. Scan multiple photos at once with the push of a button. Multi-Scan mode is automatically activated, and it scans all the pictures in a single pass, preparing a separate image file for each. It will even adjust slightly misaligned photos. Scanning multiple pages into a PDF file is just as easy. Innovative software even allows you to save your images directly to CDs as easily as scan, click, and burn (in Windows only). Plus, Canon integrated QARE 2.0 (Quality Automatic Retouching and Enhancement) technology is designed to help perfect every scan by automatically removing much of the dirt and scratches from images, making you look like a pro.

Product Description

CANOSCAN LIDE20 Flatbed Scanner
Z-LID. 600X. 1200DPI. 48BIT. USB.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Limited depth of field but great for photos and artwork, December 7, 2003

By 

Gameplayusa "Gamer" (San Fran, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner (Office Product)

This scanner is extremely easy to install and set up. You'll be scanning photos within about 10 minutes of getting it out of the box. Its also great that it draws its power through the USB chord as its just one less thing you need to worry about plugging in somewhere. The price for the scanner is hard to beat and with Amazon's free shipping, this is about the most affordable scanner out there. Its slim design and light weight is also a plus. So far I have run into only one draw back and that is its very limited depth of field. You cannot put anything with any dimension on the scanner and expect decent results. If the object is not touching the glass, the scanner cannot focus on the object and capture detail. If you're simply looking for a scanner that can be used to archieve photos or artwork, this is a great choice. The included software has enough options to fine tune control but I've been quite happy with the results using the software's default settings. I also scan directly into Photoshop where I can further enhance the results if need be. Its important to note that this scanner is plenty powerful for the average home user. 300+ DPI resolution is more than enough to scan a photo and capture just TONS of detail. If you're not a professional working in print theres just no need for a scanner that will capture 2400 dpi. So don't go looking at other higher priced scanners with super high resolution thinking higher is better. Chances are you will NEVER find a need to scan something in such high detail.

SUMMARY:

- Unbeatable price

- Easy set-up

- USB serves as power chord

- light weight and small so its easy to move

- decent surface area / bed size

- Good resolution for the average home user

- Great results with photos or artwork

- Easy to use scanning software with decent user options

- Limited depth of field, not good for 3D objects.

63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good little performer: fast, light, no AC adapter needed!!!, October 11, 2002

By 

Poppin "Poppin" (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner (Office Product)

After setting this up in about a minute I was scanning. The software/driver package is average. Warm up takes only a couple of seconds becuase it is not a CCD/lamp scanner, it is a CMOS scanner which requires less power and less components. Hopefully it will bring more reliability. USB powered. Easy for people to "borrow" or bring to a friends house. Just remember to lock/unlock it when traveling and scanning. Images are average but the speed is awesome. Beats my UMAX 1220U (1998) scanner by far. I'll probably try out epson scanners next, the quality and speed on that is supposed to be really good. If you are looking for fast, simplistic, reliable scanner, the LiDE 20 fits the bill without paying a big bill.

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Scanner for an awesome price!, May 3, 2003

By 

Bill Kirk (Gainesville, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner (Office Product)

The only scanner I've had for the past several years was a Mustek 600 scanner that was originally purchased for our 486 back in the day, but we lost the AC adapter way back. We did alright without a scanner for a while, but we finally deduced a new one would be nice to have. I bought this scanner and immidiately began hooking it up to my HP P2 450. I installed the software first, which took a little longer than I expected, but let you choose what you wanted to install, which was nice. I then restarted and plugged in the USB. There is no power cord because power is received throught the USB cable.

Next, I found a picture, stck it in the scanner, opened the included PhotoStudio 5, setup the program for the scanner, the scanber calibrated itself within a minute, then I was able to preview, crop, and scan the picture. I started at the standard 300 dpi and it came out perfect, almost as good as the original that was professionally done. I then tried it at 600 dpi, and it was even better. And you guessed it, 1200 dpi looked picture perfect. (no pun intended) With this economicly minded scanner, 1200 dpi is the max, but unless you want to blow it up about 50 times, it's original size, there is no need to have anything hihger.

PhotoStudio 5 can save in several different formats including the standard Bitmap and Jpeg. To give you an idea, The 4X6 photo that was scanned at 300 dpi and saved at 100% quality as a JPEG was only about 800KB.

When scanning, there is no warm up time, and it runs fairly quickly, but the higher the dpi, the longer it takes.

Of corse I wanted to check text decoding, so I found a magazine with several formats of text on one page, scanned it, and used the included software to decode it, and it did not make one error. When I used a friends scanner, there were many errors, but there was not one on this. My only dissapointment is it does not pick up accents when scanning spanish, it just ends up as a random letter.

All-in-all, the included software is fairly good; the scanner itself is compact, speedy, power efficent, well designed, and takes good scans; and it all comes in a nice package. So if you need a scanner for identifing and fileing english text, scanning and saving photos in compressed files at no more than 1200 dpi, or just making coppies, and you don't want to spend a lot this scanner is for you.