Epson Perfection V500 Photo Flatbed Scanner

KenVargo from GA

Member Since
Oct 2005

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User has 1 Day of experience with this product

Epson Perfection V500 Phot Flatbed Scanner

Strengths:

Ability to enlarge scanned items Ease of Setup Software works flawlessly even in Vista 64 Photo and Film scanning Detachable scanner lid for large objects

Weaknesses:

Short USB cord (but it has a USB cord) No printed manual

Posted Dec 7, 2007 - Just received the scanner and it was set up running perfectly in 30 minutes which included reorganizing the computer room. I replaced an HP PSC950 all in one with the Epson, The Epson scans faster and with more flexibility then the HP. I scanned Photos into Adobe Photoshop CS3 via import and as copied JPG files. Quality was good. Scanning documents with the Epson software into PDF documents was also quick and easy. Using Acrobat 8.0 I did have a quality problem in my first document scan. It was very grainey. Turned out I was getting JPGs because of how I selected the scanner in the software. Once I selected the correct scanner everyting was perfect. One more strength is the enlarging ability of the Epson scanner. I needed to copy proof of purchase bar codes. I enlarged the proof of purchase so that a human can read it.

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Buy now at STAPLES: $179.99

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johnb3030 from IL

Member Since
Mar 2003

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User has 2 Days of experience with this product

Strengths:

Fast start-up, lots of features, good software bundle, reasonable price.

Weaknesses:

None noted so far.

Posted Jan 6, 2008 - I had been using one of the first USB scanners for about nine years. I was looking for something faster, but waiting for something that was also significantly better in other ways. Nothing I had seen up until now satisfied that requirement at a reasonable price. This model seems to have everything I was looking for. 1. It uses white LEDs instead of a fluorescent tube as the light source. The result: zero warm-up delay. This is a HUGE improvement in usability. No more staring at that annoying "Scanner lamp warming up" message! 2. It comes with holders for both slides and negatives as standard equipment at a reasonable price. Several different negative sizes are accommodated. 3. It comes with a fully featured software suite including an OCR program and Adobe Photoshop Elements for both PC and MAC.

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

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djetton from CA

Member Since
Nov 2004

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User has 5 Days of experience with this product

Epson V500 Scanner

Strengths:

High-quality scans, ease of use

Weaknesses:

No printed manual. On-line manual only.

Posted Dec 27, 2007 - Set up was very easy. Install software and connect power and USB cord (included). Software included: Epson Scan with Easy Photo Fix, ABBY FineReader OCR, Epson Creativity Suite, User Guide, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 (Windows), Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 (Macintosh). Plastic holders for film or slides are included. The scanner does an excellent job on photo prints. The images are very crisp and clear. The OCR software does an excellent job on documents. The front panel includes one-touch buttons for scanning to a PDF-format image file, copying (sending a scan to your printer), e-mail (creating an e-mail message with the scan attached as a document), and calling up the Epson Twain driver to scan and save a file to disk. Default mode handles all of the settings for you. Home mode lets you control a few settings and Professional mode allows you to control all settings including color balance, saturation and more.

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SEinson from OH

Member Since
Jul 2003

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User has 2 Days of experience with this product

Fast and Accurate

Strengths:

Easy setup software with additional bonus software that really works,

Weaknesses:

Minor item; slide scanner only handles 4 slides at a time.

Posted Dec 5, 2007 - This is a fast and sleek unit using LED's instead of a lamp as the light source. As such there is no warm up time. Initial scans of photos and text are sharp, crisp and color accurate. The scanning software offers three modes; Auto, Home and Profession. Each is easy to use and understand. The Pro mode offers many color and sharpness adjustments that will satisfy high performance needs,

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

Buy now at PCNation.com: $186.85

Buy now at OfficeWorld.com: $197.88

Jandeix

Member Since
Dec 2007

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User has 1+ Week of experience with this product

Good, Easy to Use Scanner for Photos

Strengths:

The scanner is easy to use, versatile; can make pdf documents.

Weaknesses:

The ICE technology is available only for film and slides, not for photos.

Posted Jan 12, 2008 - I am very pleased with this scanner, which I bought primarily for use in restoring old photos. So far, it serves its purpose quite well. However, I find that, by itself, it would not be enough to restore my photos and that I must use the Photoshop Elements program which came with it to work on them.

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Buy now at STAPLES: $179.99

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Athenian from CA

Member Since
Aug 2004

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User has 1+ Weeks of experience with this product

I love this scanner!

Strengths:

Fast scanning. Easy to use. Flexible handling. Powerful bundled software.

Weaknesses:

No printed manual and no way to print one yourself.

Posted Apr 3, 2008 - I was happy with my old scanner but the manufacturer decided not to supply Vista drivers so I found myself in the market for a new one. My wish list was simple: simple: high quality scans for both photos and slides. The Epson Perfection V500 more than fills the bill. Basic scanning is fast and easy with built-in buttons for regular scanning, scan to e-mail, and scan to PDF. It also includes a one-click copier utility. The scanner really shines though when it comes to the bundled software for image correction. By switching to “Professional Mode”, I can access a whole range of options to enhance the photo as it is scanned and preview the effect of different options before generating the image file. This is one fantastic scanner!

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

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Mr_Bill03 from CA

Member Since
Jan 2004

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User has 1 Month of experience with this product

Good Scanner. I'm underwhelmed by the s/w bundle

Strengths:

good quality scans. Easy install (Mac OS X).

Weaknesses:

Bundled s/w is ancient.

Posted 1 year ago - A fundamentally good product, marred, IMO, by the inclusion of unsupported, ancient software in the bundle. Scanner itself was easy to set up. Produces good quality scans. At 6400 dpi and 24 bit color, a 35mm slide takes about 2 minutes and produces a .jpg of about 5MB. There is no printed manual, and the manual itself is very poorly organized. The slide holder only holds 4 slides. This is a big drawback if you are doing a lot of slides. My biggest beef is they included Photoshop Elements 3.0 (for Mac). My version keeps crashing when I run it. When I called Adobe, they told me that 3.0 is no longer supported and more or less laughed me off. The version in fact is 5 years old. Based on my experience, it won't run on OS X 10.5.5. So, in summary, good hardware and drivers, but the PE bundle is worse than useless. It cost me three calendar days and a couple of hours dealing with Adobe and their circular firing squad to get to the bottom line, which is buy some new software. I give it 4 stars because if you already own Photoshop, this problem is a non-issue.

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crazycat22 from CA

Member Since
Jun 2006

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User has 2 Days of experience with this product

What a GREAT scanner!

Strengths:

Easy to install and operate. Fast. Quiet. 3 different modes to choose from. Digital ICE. Price.

Weaknesses:

None

Posted Sep 15, 2007 - I just purchased this scanner - primarily to scan my 1000+ slides. At first, I was a bit reluctant because this model is brand new to the market and I was concerned about those inital bugs. But I know that Epson makes a good product so I took the chance. And am I glad that I did. It has some outstanding features: 1. Very simple to set-up and then operate. I scanned my first photo within 30 minutes of unwrapping the package. No problems with the software and the on-line User's Manual is really easy to follow. 2. Very fast scanning. The scan (including preview) of photos is unbelievably fast. But I was really surprised at the speed of scanning slides. A normal scan (without using Digital ICE correction) of 4 slides took less than 5 minutes. Compared to some of the other products, I've been reading about this is lightning speed. 3. Very quiet. When scanning photos, you can barely hear it. A little more noise when scanning slides, but certainly not bothersome. 4. Offers 3 modes to choose from - Auto, Home, and Professional. The Auto is the easiest and results in a very good photo. The Home and Professional offer a number of correcting features (more with the Professional mode). I am an intermediate Photoshop user and the Professional mode was as close to using an editing software as I've ever seen. The scan time slows down a bit when you use these correcting tools, but again - no big deal). Once I get the hang of it, I'm sure it will speed up the amount of time I will need with Photoshop. 5. Digital ICE is fantastic! This feature is used when only scanning film or slides. I first scanned slides without using it. The waulity was very good, but my slides are almost 30 years old so there was enough noise (mostly dust)and fade in them to be noticeable (something I was resigned to fix in Photoshop). I then scanned them using ICE and was amazed! The noise was completely gone and the colors were remarkably restored. The Photoshop work is going to be a piece of cake. 6. The price is unbelievable for what you get. I've seen scanners costing much, much more that aren't nearly as good as this one. In summary, Epson has come up with a real winner. I really can't find anything negative to say. If you're looking for a quality scanner at a great price, look no further. This is the one!

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

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kgivens from PA

Member Since
Mar 2003

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User has 4 Days of experience with this product

Incremental step up from the Perfection 4490

Strengths:

Start up time before scan much improved

Weaknesses:

Software still kludgy

Posted Apr 9, 2008 - I've been using Epson scanners for years; this is my fourth. It was an upgrade to a Perfection 4490. Functionally about the same, including the button layout and software. The higher resolution of the V500 has proved useful for transparency scans, but I most appreciate the shorter lamp warm-up time on this unit. However, I wish Epson would overall the software. After scanning, you have to maually close certain windows to proceed with the process, which seems like a stupid oversight. The software has had this glitch for as long as I have used their scanners.

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Nelson1961

Member Since
Jan 2008

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User has 1 Day of experience with this product

Perfection V500 Photo Flatbed Scanner (6400x9600, USB 2.0, PC/Mac)

Strengths:

Ease of use, quality of scans.

Weaknesses:

Instruction manual included only on CD

Posted Feb 29, 2008 - I bought it to scan old photos to share with family. Another scanner had proven unsatisfactory. This one has done a great job. Not having a printed instruction manual makes it awkward and difficult to learn. While the scanner does a great job in the Auto mode, I have to feel that I am not getting the optimum out of it. Having said that, I would buy it again. Note that I am inexperienced in using scanners, so my judgments are based mostly on what I have been able to do with this scanner versus what someone else did with another. It's a shame that Epson does not make it easier for the user to learn how to get the most from this scanner by including a printed manual.

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

Buy now at PCNation.com: $186.85

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Pacman40

Member Since
Aug 2005

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User has 7 Days of experience with this product

Epson Scanner

Strengths:

Clean image even if less than 8 1/2 x 11. Flexible lid to allow for books. Easy buttons on front. Will scan directly to PDF.

Weaknesses:

Noisy!

Posted Dec 28, 2007 - Replaced old HP scanner. First Epson product - easy to sit up, very clean scans, good image quality. Does take a while to warm up and scan or copy - and is rather noisy - high pitch noise. But would recommend regardless of noise.

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gregaa53

Member Since
Mar 2008

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Disappointed

Strengths:

Can't tell, won't power up.

Weaknesses:

Can't tell, won't power up.

Posted Mar 11, 2008 - I was very disappointed with Epson technical support. When I unpacked my Epson scanner it would not power up. I checked external power supply with a multi - meter and found than I had 118 volts in but no DC out. I called Epson's Non-toll free number and got a lady who could only read from a script. She was very rude and told me I'd have to take it to a service center about 60 miles away. So the bottom line is I'll be returning the scanner and stay away from Epson.

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Buy now at Epson: $149.00

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Epson Perfection V500 Photo Flatbed Scanner

6400x9600, USB 2.0, PC/Mac - MPN: B11B189011

Epson Perfection V500 Phot Flatbed Scanner