Customer Reviews

HP ScanJet 4670 See-Thru Vertical Scanner

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

This scanner has a lot of potential, but fails to deliver.

I like the slim design and it scans reasonably fast; at least compared to what I have been use to. Also the see-thru design is a plus. At first I thought it rather gimmicky, but found out in scanning large maps and such it was a boon to getting a minimal but slight overlap between adjacent scans. Also this scanner does not mind being inverted, in fact it does not care which orientation it is in. Some desk top scanners do not like being inverted, if fact they jam!

Now the down side, on certain colors it scans alternating bands of light and dark exposure across the width of the image. Fourteen to be exact. It turns up on grey colors, ivory, off-whites; it is very distinctive on silver-gray. On full color pictures or typed documents it does not manifest. Playing with the exposure setting does not help if the banding is strong. Also if the image is not tight against the platen, this alternating light/dark pattern also occurs. According to HP advance tech support this is due to optimization for scanning colors in such a space saving scanner bar design.
The scanner has very poor depth of field. Other desktop scanners start to loose focus and the image darkens if the object being scanned gets further than a 1/4" from the platen. (Though you get some really bad parallax errors before that point!) With this scanner the image goes dark and the bands appear if the space is a mere 1/16". HP advance tech support has a document describing this issue but it pertains to scanning 3D objects. However for practical purposes it is a fault when you try to scan anything near the gutter of a book. If scanning maps or an atlas you need to under-pad the document so that it can conform and press tight against the platen. Any gaps between the document and platen will appear dark, the scanning lamp is underpowered.

You may have trouble getting the HP Director software to run with some computers from a very popular company, dude. Though it did work on other XP and Win98 machines I tried, so the fault seems to be certain installations/configurations of XP and not HP scanning software supplied with the scanner. I never did get it to launch on my computer and ended up having to scan via my image editing software using the TWAIN interface. Which was HP tech supports workaround. Once you get into the HP scanning application (via Director or TWAIN) the HP Scan interface looks like something designed for a UNIX workstation or Windows 3.11. Nowhere near as polished as other, even older HP scanning applications I have seen, downright primitive.

The third party panoramic software bundled is junk. I tried several photographs and then successively simpler images (line art, scanned typed documents) for it to stitch together and it never even came close to getting the images aligned. Even with the use of the manual 'assistance markers' it failed every time. Completely hopeless. I had hoped to make use of the OCR software but had so much trouble with the other issues I never got around to loading and trying it.

HP tech support will string you along if you have these exposure issues. Unfortunately I bought my 4670 when they first came out and there were no reviews yet posted. HP will try to tell you a self-powered USB hub is required. Don't believe it, if you have 200mA available at the USB port you have plenty and most new machines far exceed that; for example mine had 500mA (by the way HP was unable to tell me what the minimum USB port power requirement was for the scanner.) However I worked with HP outsourced tech support and tried all the different things they suggested like latest drivers and reloading the software and sent them test scans to examine. They replaced the scanner once, and were going to do so again, when I started to notice others were complaining of the same light/dark band issue. Finally they admitted it was in the design of the scanner and replacing it was not going to solve the problem. They did offer to buy it back, but since I what been so patient working with them the scanner was now considered used and I only got a partial refund. HP hardware used to be rock-solid, but this experience makes me wonder if they have not changed.

This scanner is priced as a premium unit. I did not find it delivered acceptable results. The support with this unit was friendly and patient, and usually one got through in a reasonably quick time. But it was not very knowledgeable about the product and offered inaccurate advice. Also the policy of only offering a partial refund after diligently working with their tech support on an issue that turned out to be an inherent fault in the design of the scanner I felt to be non-conducive to creating satisfied customers. They tell me it is policy, and hope I will consider buying HP products in future. I will consider long and hard before buying another HP scanner that is for sure!

D.Kephart
PA, USA

This scanner I've found turned out to work much better than expected. I needed a replacement when I put my printer/scanner on a network interface and lost it's scanning abilities.

I gave this one a try, because of the small space it takes up. But, I was wary of the negative reviews it's been receiving.

I got it and installed it. I didn't have any problems with Windows XP. Properly installed with administrator rights, and not making the mistake of hooking up the printer before installing the software, I didn't have any problems with the computer not recognizing the scanner.

Admittedly I don't use the HP software, but my own 3rd party software. The software isn't really that good.

Scan quality is good. The first scan does take a long time, but subsequent scans are very fast in comparison.

The negative and slide scanner does turn out good scans, if you're using the default quality settings of 300dpi. It's better on higher settings, but takes forever to scan.

Overall, an excellent buy.

*Very* ugly "banding" lines. Ordered a replacement..same thing! Determined to be defective by objective party. (I use Mac 10.3.)

If you carefully inspect a scan of a photograph, you will notice light and dark bands organized horizontally through your image. I tried two separate scanners, three computers with three different operating systems, and installed a USB 2.0 high-speed adapter, and still had a flawed image. HP tech support suggested several procedures, and nothing worked. I paid my own computer consultant to work on it, in case I'd missed something. I love the scanner, but I'm returning it. Clearly, the product has some electronic flaw. Don't waste your time.

After looking through the other reviews of this product, it's very clear that there was a design flaw early in it's prodcution. However, I bought my unit from Amazon in Januray of 2005 and experienced none of the issues others have. So, maybe the problem has been fixed.

I've found this scanner to be really good at almost everything. Perhaps I have been lucky, but I've had no problems with the software at all. Then again, my system was brand new when I installed this scanner, so maybe that helped. Also, I have other reviews that complain about slow speeds. I have found just the opposite - this scanner is very fast. I thought the HP software was easy to use and fairly strightforward. My only complaint with it is that it doesn't give you as much flexibility as some other scanning software out there, but is still much better than the default Windows scanning interface.

The scanner is fast and quiet, and the design makes it really useful for scanning books, posters and odd objects. It handles pictures and text equally well, and I have been really pleased with it.

The only negative to this product is it's performace with the included transparency adapter. This most definitely is not a film/slide scanner, and the design of the tranparency adapter makes dust a real problem. There is a glass cover that holds the slide/film in place, and this means you have to worry about dust on the negative, the scanner bed, the backlight and both side of the glass cover. This is a real pain, and the scanner does not have ICE or any type of dust removal software to help out. Also, I found the color reproduction with the tranparency adapter to be really poor. If you are going to be scanning a lot of film, this most certainly is NOT the scanner for you.

This IS for someone who wants a good, fast flatbed scanner with an innovative design which will do a great job with your documents and photos. And, as a bonus, it can serve as a picture frame when not in use. Pretty cool!

If you look at the reviews of this scanner they are extremely polarized - either people love it or hate it mostly because of a problem with banding. My suggestion to anyone buying this scanner is to get it from a vendor with a good return policy, test the scanner immediately and if you see any of the banding issues others are so upset with return it and either get your money back or a replacement. However, if you don't have this issue, I think you will be very please with this product.

I just love this scanner. Not only does it work well for documents as well as slides and negatives, it has a very small footprint on the desk and looks so Slick!

I read the other reviews about stripes/banding on scans. I did a bunch of tests, and unless you are scanning tin-foil (duh), I could not get any banding. I have used hi-end scanners in the past, and this surpases my old tried and true scanner.

I waited 10 minutes for a scan of a bussines card in 600 dpi!!
300 dpi scans fine but anything higher takes to long, with a bigger scan you can wait more than 30 minutes where my Epson takes 4...

This scanner is versatile, compact, and makes great scans. It was incredibly easy to install on my 3.5 yr old computer (with Windows XP). In the short time I've had it, I've successfully scanned photos, negatives, and text using the OCR feature. The picture produced from the negative was about 3"x5", but was adequate for my needs. The text scan was produced by placing the portable scanning screen over an open book. It produced only a few text errors.
My only complaint is that it's slower than I thought it would be. It's still faster than my 3 yr old Canon, but not nearly as fast as the similarly priced flatbed HP scanner my sister purchased last summer. Perhaps when I have a big batch of pictures I'll still have to go to her house to scan them...

Not a bad little scanner. I like its appearance, goes nicely with my iMac. The scan quality is very good and I have had no problems using the scanner (I had been concerned after reading some of the reviews). The scanner utility for quick scanning is very nice.

The negatives are that it is not a very quick scanner, although it is better than my old Umax. The other drawback is that I went from a 14 inch bed to this 11 inch bed. That's not the scanner's fault of course, I just wish it came in a larger size as well. :)

All in all, it performs as advertised and looks good.

My configuration:
iMac G5 running Mac OS X 10.4

I have to confess, all the bad reviews here made me debate buying this for a while, but an artist recommended it for what I needed (oversize scanning), and I am completely happy with the results. I've always had problems piecing together scanned sections of my large artwork, and the design of this scanner not only makes it easy to scan, but I don't have the problems with differing color/contrast balances between scans I've had with other scanners in the past. I can scan, merge, and save large images in a snap! Plus it's very quiet and takes up a lot less space on my desktop than my old, traditional flatbed scanner. I didn't have any problems setting up the software on my iBook. The colors look very good, and printouts off the scans look quite close to the original without excessive fussing around.

While I haven't had this scanner long enough to evaluate how well it will stand up with time, so far I am quite pleased with my purchase and would recommend it at least to anyone who has similar scanning needs to me.