Epson Perfection 2580 PHOTO Flatbed Scanner (2400x4800, USB 2.0, PC/Mac)

Reviewed by: mlmckenzie

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Film feeder, low price, good results

Weaknesses: rather loud, scans slowly, film scanner lid broke after 11 negatives

Overall Evaluation: I bought the Epson 2580 with an Epson rebate. In it's price class it seemed as least as good if not better than the others. It also had very good expert reviews, so I thought I'd give it a chance. The negative feeder in the lid was a real incentive for me. I'm replacing an 8 year old professional HP model. The software included isn't overly obvious to work with and there are no printed manuals. You're give an webpage type (html) help system to work with--nothing that could easily be printed. The Epson Scan does work well, but you have to change modes in order to have any control over the scanning. The other software really didn't interest me since I use other imaging software that I'm quite happy with, so I can't really state how well that works. Using the flatbed was easy. You set your photo on, press a button on the scanner to pull up the Epson Scan software and then press a button on the software. It automatically scans and crops the image and saves it to a numbered file (or a name if you want to override it). It was a bit slow and noisy compared to my old scanner, but the end result was a very clear scan. It also will split out multiple images and sae them separately if you scan more than one at a time. The negative scanner also worked quite well--at first. It automatically senses the number of frames on the negative and saves each to it's own file. I mainly used the default settings but the end scans were quite clear. I had a few times that the automatic feeder did not pick up the negative. Most of the time, it never jammed, I just had to press the negative eject button and try again. Then, after about 11 negatives it no longer worked. If you're just looking for a flatbed scanner, this is a good buy. If, like me, you bought it because of the negative feeder, I'd recommend looking for something else.