Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection 2480 Photo Flatbed Scanner

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

 

 

I bought this scanner to scan and organize all of my paper photos. I'm very impressed with the quality of the scans, the colors are acurate and the detail is excellent as well. I also tried the negative adapter and it worked great.

The software that comes with the scanner is the best part. You can put a photo in the middle of the scanner, press the scan button on the scanner and it determines the orientation correctly (even if the photo is not perfectly straight). It's as close to "unattended" as you can get; you just have to swap the photos. I use it in combination with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 and use the "batch processing" feature to name and save all the scanned photos at once.

This job would be unmanageble on my old scanner, a CanoScan 620U.

I did have a problem with the first unit I bought being defective. I left it plugged in overnight and it was dead in the morning. I was happy enough with the results and low price to buy another one.

This scanner was excellent for scanning pictures and images, but did poorly with 35mm negatives. The color was dull and had a brown tint to it. In comparison to the Canon Lide80, the film scan was terrible. This is a GREAT scanner if you do not wish to scan film.

For a $100 scanner, I didn't expect high quality scans. What I did get out of it was a lot better than I expected. Most of the detail in photographs and documents came out pretty good. Hey, it does photos, slides, negatives, and works great with my Mac. That sold me right there. Not everything is perfect though.

When using the text "interpreter", it has a tendency to turn blemishes (fold lines, scratches) on the paper, into strange text, and unreadable ascii characters. It's not too much of a pain, as it's usually pretty easy to clean up with a text editor.
When doing negatives, it does not reliably scan all the images on the negative. I've had to scan some several times to get the image that I wanted.
This thing is also slow. We're talking slooow here. I haven't used that many scanners, but all the ones I've used have been lightning fast compared to this one. It took 3 and a half minutes just to do a simple document copy (scanner straight to printer).
There are times when a document or photo won't scan completely (the edges are cut off). I can solve this problem most of the time, by putting a colored sheet of paper behind whatever I'm scanning, and edit that part out in photoshop.

On the bright side, I've never had a problem doing slides. I can put three or four photos on the glass, and the scanner will turn them into seperate documents for each. Orientation doesn't matter either, just use the built in software to reorient the picture. (yes, it works on Macs too).

If you're just starting out, and need something inexpensive, for light work, this will satisfy your needs. If you are going to do a lot of scanning, then you'll probably want something speedier.

This isn't the greatest thing in the world, but it satisfies my needs.

First, on the most important topic: quality. This scanner produces phenomenal quality for the money. It's still a consumer grade scanner, but Epson simply delivers very good optical quality. I have scanned in 4x6 prints and used a scan to print an 8x10 that was perfectly acceptable - that is impressive.

Yes, the quality is noticably lower for scans of negatives, but that is always the case with flatbed scanners, and the only real alternative in the marketplace to spending upwards of a thousand dollars for a negative scanner is to have negatives scanned professionally. You should assume that the quality level for scanning negatives is high enough for use on the web, and for reproduction as 4x6 photographs, but your scans from prints will be better. You will find this flatbed competitive in quality with the lower end negative scanners, and can consider the negative scanning capability a nice throw-in for the price.

The interface is somewhat slow and tedious, in part because the "automatic" function really has limited use for me. I scan a variety of types of photographs and documents, and always end up making adjustments in "custom". It would be nice to be able to configure the software to go directly to "custom" (and would cut 30-45 seconds per scan), or to have "semi-automatic" pre-settings that would also cut time configuring the software for each individual scan. A lot of effort has gone into that automatic function, and for those who do not use the custom settings I suspect it is very valuable. For perfectionists (real or imagined) who want to make sure the scan gets all possible details and who want to carefully preview and adjust the images, the automatic function gets in the way.

There is a difference among scanners in quality, and spending more will almost always get you a higher quality scanner. But, for the money, it will be tough to beat this one.

The unit I received appeared to have a defective CCD imaging system. The scan quality was pretty good, but every scan had 2 vertical red lines that went from top to bottom. Couldn't get rid of it no matter what I tried. Unfortunately, have to return to Amazon. Will probably try a different Epson model scanner next time around.

The Epson Perfection 2480 was my third attempt at finding a perfect scanner for my needs. I'm trying to convert all of my childhood, my wife's childhood, and my other family pictures to digital for archiving and family distribution. Some of these pictures are in 35mm color negative, some in positive slides, some in some small format negative, and some in old photos. This scanner only allows you to scan three 35mm negatives per pass, so scanning negatives was tedious and time consuming. Plus the firmware on the scanner was set so that for every image pass the scanner moved back to the stop position before it would move on to the next image, rather than begining where the other ended. So for three negatives it would make six large moves, which seems like excessive wear and may make the life shorter. The software worked great, but in the end I returned this item for the Epson 4180, for the extra $90 you get 12 negatives per pass and it seems to be twice as fast. Worth the extra money if you have boxes to scan like I do!

Epson was clearly going for features over quality with this scanner. You don't need to get out a ruler to notice that the images produced are distored. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines are all wobbly. On my unit the right inch of the image is noticeably darker than the rest of the image. Colors are inconsistent to, with the center being bluer and the sides begin greener.

Yes, this is only $100, so I wasn't expecting "Perfection", but I was expecting distortions and problems to be limited to things I'd have to measure or see only under magnification. With this scanner, just scanning an invoice shows up the problems without even trying to look for them.

The packaged OCR software worked great the one time I tried it and I could see using this scanner for OCR and in place of a Fax scanner, but if you care about image quality at all, this is not the scanner for you.

It's been many years since I've worked with such an unreliable peice of hardware. Of the 10 times I've tried to use it, it has only functioned properly once. Changing cables, restarting scanner, restaring computer, re-installing software.... nothing. When you really need it to work and it consistently fails leaves you're left feeling very frustrated. Do yourself a favor and pay the extra money to get a scanner that will be reliable. This scanner isn't.

My 6 year old trusty Umax scanner was starting to show its age, so i looked for a new scanner that had good reviews. The Epson Perfection 2480 seemed to be one of the best rated.
I use my scanner a few times a week for scanning graphic art.
I have found this scanner to be disappointing compared to my old Umax. I find I get cast shadows around my images, so much so, that I took it in for repairs after having it only 3 months. All the major parts that could have been causing the problem were replaced, but I still have the problem, so I assume it is a builit in defect.
Too bad. I will probably look for a better scanner for my needs.

Although the Epson Perfection 2480 Photo (this one came along with Multi Phoot Feeder) keeps colors fairly accurate, I am disapointed when it comes to scanning photos, papers and the like on the flatbed. In this case, the area scanned is smaller than the glass plate indicates. Aligning any object to either side of the glass plate (using it's borders as the aligment tool) will unavoidably cut of part of the scanned image (as shown in the customer photos I uploaded.)

The only `workaround' for this problem is to use a ruler and align it to the platter's borders and than to align the photo to the ruler. Unfortunately this will not work with larger objects, such as a letter-sized sheet of paper.

Also, the scanners utility software (Espon Scan V2.65A) does not allow you to save your settings with a custom name (such as "Bob's Slides"); instead you have to overwrite an existing template, or choose the default name given (such as "Setting 1, Setting 2, etc.).

Finaly, I need to point out that the driver software launched from inside a graphics application (such as Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop Elements) crashes frequently if I make a larger number of 300dpi scans.

All said, this scanner is too expensive to be purchased - so I'm going to replace it with a Cannon.