Pandigital Photo Scanner Review
It seems mobile scanners are becoming more and more popular. This one, from Pandigital, who also make digital picture frames, is a new portable scanner designed for quickly digitizing analog photo prints of wallet size up to 8 /12 X 11”. It works for both color and black and white. The resolution of 600 dpi is good enough to capture crisp, sharp images.
Most people will want to use the Pandigital Photolink for scanning and archiving old family snapshots and portraits. Why not just use a flatbed scanner? Well, that’s fine for two or three photos, but after you lift the lid a few times, place the picture, then crop it and size it in Photoshop, you’ll look the boxes of family photos in the closet and give up the whole idea.
With the Pandigital scanner, you just feed the pictures into the slot, wait 10 seconds or so, then feed in the next picture. Also, you don’t need it to be hooked up to a computer, the images are saved to an internal flash memory card, which means you can take the Pandigital over to your grandparents’ or aunts’ house and scan in all their photos, too.
The best price on the Pandigital Photolink One-Touch PANSCN06 right now is at Amazon, where it is up to 33% off list price, plus free shipping. That puts it at just under the 100$ mark. Click here to take advantage of this great deal.
A few of the Photolink’s features:
- Weight: 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions: 11.2 x 2.3 x 8.4 inches
- Memory Card formats: SD, XD, MS, MS Pro, and MMC memory cards
- File Format: JPG
- Connectivity: USB 2.0
- Resolution: 300 dpi (default) , 600 dpi
- Power Source: AC adapter
- Scanning Speed: approx 10 seconds for 4 X 6” photo at 300 dpi
The main complaint I have with this scanner is the lack of either battery or USB power. Considering the fact that it is meant to be portable, having to carry along an AC adapter brick and find an outlet to plug it into seems a bit of a letdown. If mobility is your prime concern, then go with the Vuepoint Magic Wand scanner, which runs on 2 AA batteries. (see our review here)
Resolution may also be an issue- if you need to captures to be top resolution, museum quality archival files, then you will need to sacrifice portability and go with a high quality flatbed scanner like the Epson Perfection V600. (our review here)
Here is what one owner had to say about the Pandigital Photolink:
A very nice compact scanner. Exactly what I was looking for to scan pre-digital camera pictures onto my computer. It does a very nice job on my 40 to 60 year old 2″ by 3″ pictures. It is a pleasure to view them full screen on the computer. They are much clearer and larger than the original photos, not to mention the ease of accessing photos on a computer vs. muddling through numerous photo albums.The scanner is easy to use and 100 times faster than the my computer printer/scanner. –JP. Abridged for space. click here to read full review
