Epson PERFECTION 1660

Epson Perfection 1660 Photo Review

by Richard Jantz

- WHAT'S HOT: A combination of very fast performance at low and medium resolutions (up to 600 dpi) and sharp, colorful images earns the Epson Perfection 1660 Photo a strong thumbs-up. Like the Perfection 1650 Photo it replaces, the Perfection 1660 Photo is a 48-bit scanner with a maximum horizontal resolution of 1600 dpi. Also like its predecessor, it comes with a transparency adapter built into its lid. But unlike the older model, the 1660 supports the faster USB 2.0 interface (like almost all USB 2.0 devices, it also works with USB 1.1 connections). Tested using USB 2.0, the Perfection 1660 Photo was fastest among our current batch of small-office units at full-page, 300-dpi documents, both color and black-and-white. It also scanned a 600-dpi, 4-by-5-inch gray-scale photo faster than any other model in our current set of scanners--small-office or corporate--and it took just a hair over 9 seconds to scan a 4-by-5-inch color print at 100 dpi, coming in first among small-office models and second behind the $699 HP Scanjet 7450c. Only at 1200 dpi did the Perfection lose ground to other small-office scanners, including HP's Scanjet 5500c and Visioneer's OneTouch 9000 USB.