HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H)

by HP

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 24 x 6 x 12 inches ; 11.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 16 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000A6X9OI
• Item model number: 4890
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 23, 2005

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Hobbyists and small offices will gain equal benefit from the HP Scanjet 4890. With non-optimized resolution of 4,800 x 9,600, 48-bit color, and 256-level grayscale, every image or text document comes out sharp and clear. The built-in adapter allows you to quickly produce sizable batch scans of 16 slides, 30 negatives, multiple medium format film frames, or a single 4" x 5" film negative, making short work of archiving old treasures or processing professional shots.

For bulky items, HP designed a lid that allows clean scans from a sleek scanner--with the lid in its normal position, the scanner measures just 4 inches tall. The scan bed is large enough to process standard 8" x 12" photos.

The 4890 has four front-panel buttons that give you one-touch access to copies or scanning directly to specific formats. Enlargement/reduction is available onscreen in a range of 10 to 2,000 percent in increments of one percent.

Compatible with both Macintosh and Windows operating systems, HP software includes features designed to improve yesterday's photos along with slides from your childhood--dust and scratch removal, color restore, brightening dark areas of a shot and red eye removal are all included. A hi-speed USB connection (cable included) is compatible with USB 2.0 ports and offers exceptionally fast data transfer--about 26 seconds for a single 4" x 6" photo and about 28 seconds for a text document to Word. HP includes a one-year warranty covering parts and labor and provides free telephone support.

What's in the Box
4890 photo scanner, built-in slide and negative adapter and template kit, USB cable, power supply adapter/power cord, CDs with software and user instructions, setup poster, user's manual, warranty card

Product Description

HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It has problems in scanning slides, April 8, 2006

By 

G. D. Hungerford (Mobile, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H) (Office Product)

If you intend to use the scanner for digitizing 35mm slides, be aware that this scanner has some problems. If you load the slide holder with 16 slides, the preview scan may only recognize 8 or 10 of these, and you have to try to manually recover the others. This may or may not be successful. This is especially a problem with slides that are relatively dark, but the same slides were scanned without difficulty by my old Epson scanner.
A second major problem is that the preview scans present as tiny thumbnail images which are too small to properly evaluate or modify using image editing software. I could find no way of enlarging the thumbnails, and the online HP technician confirms that there is no way to enlarge them. I regard this as a serious problem. At least for me the scanner does not function satisfactorily as a slide scanner, (the principle reason for which I bought it), and I have returned the unit.

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The software kills it!, May 16, 2006

By 

Michael Nourse "Alaska Coin Exchange" (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H) (Office Product)

I really need an HP scanner because that is the only brand that does a good job on 3-D objects. My old HP 5300-C scanner was a wonderful device with great software. I finally wore it out after 5 years and 100,000 scans.

The 4890 was the only HP I could get my hands on. As far as I can tell, the scanner works great, but the software is a DISASTER! You can not set up this scanner to scan the same area over and over again without wasting a great deal of time doing a preview and setting your scan area each and every time. What this means is that there are now two stepst to scanning an item rather than one. This is not trivial as it more than doubles the amount of time needed to scan an object, a very serious flaw if you have a lot of scanning to do.

I went to HP's live chat to ask if I could use the old 5300c software to run this unit, but was told that would not work. If you only have to scan an item once in a blue moon this scanner will work fine for you as the time wasting software will not impact you very badly, but if you do a large amount of scanning, you must avoid this scanner due to the incredibly poorly written and inefficient software. Unfortunately, due to the amazingly bad software, this unit is going back for a refund.

On a side note, unlike other reviewers, I had no problem loading the software and getting the scanner up and running.

Another complaint about this scanner is that it is actually a bit slower than the five year old 5300c model. It hesitates briefly several times during the process of scanning. The difference in scan time is not great, maybe an extra 10 seconds per page, but combined with the disasterous software issue it all adds up to a lot of wasted time.

Again, the software is so bad that this has to go back for a refund I am sad to say. I had high expectations for a $200 scanner from HP after having such great success with my prevoious one.

119 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a true 4800 dpi scanner, October 13, 2005

By 

Darth Vader (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H) (Office Product)

Don't by this scanner if you expect anything close to 4800 dpi.
I bought this scanner with the intention to scan my slides.
I was not able to get the resolution I expected from a 4800 dpi scanners.
The result was only marginally better than the result I got
by projecting the slides and taking images using my 3 MPix digicam.
By using the "slanted edge" method I measured a resolution
that rather looked like a 1200 dpi scanner.
Also when using the slide adapter the result become even
worse since the slides become more out of focus.
Got no help from HP support. The reaction to my measurements
was basically "that's the way it is"
Also: The software user interface is kludgy and hard to work with.
This is not what I expected from HP, my previous experience of
HP-products is quite good.