Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection 1670 Photo Scanner

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In interests of full disclosure, I was only interested in using the scanner to scan family slides, and I returned the scanner after one week.

On the positive side, installation was a breeze in Windows XP. Epson includes a high-speed USB 2.0 cable, which was a nice extra, as most companies skimp here. I was also intrigued by the "touch up old faded photos" software. I have had great experiences with Epson scanners before: in the past I have found Epson scanners to be among the fastest and most accurate, and they have, in the past, included the best OCR software free. I was disappointed that this scanner included ABBYY's OCR software, which is inferior to the OCR software Epson included with last year's scanners. (See CNET's reviews of OCR software.)

After hooking up, I scanned a photo using the included software and automatic settings. The scan went well. I was a little surprised that the automatic settings default to 300 dpi scanning (whether for photos or slides), but higher settings produce images so large in (initially uncompressed) megabytes as to slow down my relatively new Dell computer with 128 meg RAM. Scanning the photo went quickly.

Things did not go as well with the slide scanning. While the software is quite easy to manage, whether in automatic or manual settings, a few annoyances interfere with what could otherwise be quite a successful suite. First off, the scanning software uses overlapping windows for such (simultaneous) windows as the preview window, the scanned pictures window, and the manual settings window, but none of these have separate tabs or "buttons" in the Windows XP taskbar, so it is difficult to move each out of the way to find the other ones. I'm unsure how they even accomplished this, as I've never used a program in XP that didn't produce a button on the taskbar corresponding to an open window. At first this was an annoyance, but after three days, it was crazy infuriating, as it makes it difficult not only to deal with the scanner windows themselves which keep hiding each other, but it also makes very cumbersome to multitask with any other programs. When the scanner is scanning, its software window sometimes will not hide, and then when you do hide it, you can't bring it to the fore again without minimizing the other programs' windows, or it will bring to the fore the wrong window. How Epson can commission an expertly performing software application, but have it without corresponding window-tabs, is typical of today's rush-to-the-market user-unfriendly software. I suppose it doesn't matter when scanning the occasional piece, but it certainly ain't fun when you're scanning the family photo album.

But the final straw was that after hours of scanning various slides at different resolutions, I could not produce a scan that was not SLIGHTLY blurry. Since some of my slides were taken by professional photographers and look crystal clear on the wall, I scuttled my project and returned the scanner. Why spend a week converting the family slides for permanent sharing and archiving, and getting a blurry scan? I have read that this is a common problem with inexpensive scanners: I suspect that if you take the slide out of its white cardboard frame, so it can lay perfectly flat, they might be in focus, but I don't want to ruin my slides. Seems to me that if they can put an autofocus mechanism in extremely cheap cameras, they could have figured out a way to autofocus the slides in this slide-scanning scanner.

Let me start with a disclaimer- all I want out of a scanner is fast scanning of B&W/gray scale material in an office environment. I have bought/tested several suposedly fast scanners and I have been disappointed (the Canon I bought thinks about scanning for 45 seconds, then it scans!)Well the Epson delivers- scanning at 200 dpi I can do partial pages in 5-6 seconds and full pages in 12 seconds (that's from the time you press scan to the end) You can bypass the preview mode and send the scans directly to a program or file. The software has good (you can save all the scan settings for different scans) and bad points (it seems basackwards sometimes-ex. some features only activate after you do a preview scan)
Can't comment on other features i don't use but for $$$ this is a speed demon!

Working on a compact budget, I was looking for something I could use to scan photos, negatives, and slides that would approach quality amateur level.

For photo scans, I was impressed by the speed, the quality was average or slightly better than average.

For slide scans, I found that if you have an image with a lot of black or very dark space, the scanner/software gets confused and it took several tries to get it right; sometimes, it wouldn't happen at all. Otherwise, slide scanning was fine. Nothing to write home about, but adequate.

I've had much better luck with film negative scans. Colors come out rich and detail is fine. The higher resolutions take forever, but the results are worth it.

I tried playing with the three different software settings: full-on automatic, pro, and home use. I haven't bothered with the automatic mode, it was too restrictive. The professional setting is more trouble than it's worth, for the most part. Great if you want to play around with colors and such for the fun of it, but trying to use it for color correction was more of a hassle. The 'home' setting works best for me 95% of the time.

There are better scanners out there, but for the price, this is a fine little machine.

After reading countless reviews of Epson's and others, I bought the 1670 scanner, but made sure to download the latest driver (for Windows XP)before I even began the installation. Thus everything went very smoothly, and I was scanning almost immediately. It's true that the on-line instructions are not the best, but a little study time will make most things clear.
Some fifty year old color slides were readily scanned and produced fine enlargements for e-mailing or printing. With the current rebate, this is a very good value, and I'm quite satisfied. May I never need tech support!

I got an Epson 3170 first which kept on crashing on my eMac. There was an issue with drivers that Epson didn't cover on their DownLoads web site. I took it back and got the 1670 at the Apple Store. It's not as good as the 3170 but it doesn't crash and since the return of the 3170, Epson now has updated drivers for Mac's.
I have hundreds of slides I'd like to burn to cd and the 1670 will do 2 at a time, in comparison to the 3170, which is 4. This may take me into the next life to get done, so I'm going to try showing the slides in the screen and taking digital pictures that way.
This scanner is relatively fast and easy to use. The buttons on the front, I never use them. Open the scanned images from Photoshop, or the editing software that comes with it (PhotoImpression), and work from there.
It's kind of noisy, the sound it makes reminds me of an old juke-box making a selection.
I'm a little dissapointed that I took the 3170 back but I'm sure this scanner is more than I'll need and what it does is more than adequate. You can't go wrong. The rebate helped, too.

open the box, install software, plug it in and scan. works perfectly for me for scanning in all of my old photos (I'm going all digital). the auto scan and save mode works well, and made it almost effortless to archive years worth of photos. I also like the high spedd USB 2.0 interface to speed transfers to my laptop.

I did not try the film scanner attachment, but it works great on normal photos. highly recommend!

I do PR and marketing for a small hospital and have ended up scanning a lot more than I would have thought. I've used the 1670 for a couple of months now. It was easy to set up and quick to use; it scans quickly; the color is great. The OCR software that came with it works GREAT.

The scanning software seems easy to use, altho I admit I use Photoshop for making any changes to photos or graphics, so I can't comment on whether the photo manipulation software works well.

one of 2 quibbles: the scans all come out 1 or 2 degrees tilted, even if I've lined up the original against the side of the glass; is this normal for scanners? (...) .

2nd quibble: I sent in my rebate coupon the day I received the scanner, but I haven't received my rebate yet.

After reading excellent reviews on cnet, I expected a much better product. The editing software was lacking, and using the scanner did slow down my computer. What I found most annoying though was that it doesn't have an on/off switch. I know I could have unplugged it when not in use, but then turning it back on, the computer didn't acknowledge it, and then having to reboot slowed things down more. Finally, after about a year the scanning light burned out. I recently replaced it with the hp3180 all in one which was reasonably priced at amazon and came with the additional capabilities of printing and copying.

I have been using this scanner for over 1 year and have used it to scan hundreds of typewritten pages, old slides, and photographs. For the money, this is one fine tool. We have a newer, much more expensive scanner at our office, but I have often taken work home to scan because the Epson 1670 does a better job.

My only complaint is the lack of any cohesive instructions on how to use it. Once I did figure out from trial and error how to use the machine, I grew to love it for its speed.

The Copy Utility software does not work in WinXP. Apparently there is a conflict with the twain and twunk files that Windows uses. After 7+ hours...on my dime...with advanced tech support they gave up and said they can't do anything about the problem. The copy program is unusable and they said "too bad".
They don't have an 800 number so you must pay to get their problems fixed.
The Abby OCR program only works half the time. Many documents come out with gibberish on them. Poor program.

Epson quality has definitely gone downhill. Will never buy another Epson product again.