Epson Perfection 4490 Photo

Epson Perfection 4490 Photo

Perfection 4490 Photo Review, by Richard Jantz October 5, 2005

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• Latest User Reviews 1 review
• Reviewed by: sedfa47

  Duration of ownership: 1 Day

  Strengths: USB cable included

  Weaknesses: Compatibility with Vista questionable

  Overall: I've got the Scanner on Friday evening, June 29. The label on the driver indicated the full compatibility with both Vista 64 and 32-bit. Spent the night trying to install. DID NOT WORK. Dowloaded the driver from Epson's web site. DID NOT WORK TOO. Every time I removed all traces of EPSON and tried again, no result. Telephone support at EPSON is CLOSED ALL WEEKEND. So on Sunday morning June 30, I returned the Scanner and got my money back.

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: Don't Know-It never worked!

  Weaknesses: Customer Division

  Overall: Bought my 4490 in another city and when I got home it had no power cord so instead of taking it back I followed the instructions and called the help line. Big mistake! After several calls I finally got a power cord in the mail. Once I plugged it in nothing happened. Not a light or even a sound. When I called back all I got was, ?Is it plugged in?? ?Shake the cord? or ?Giggle the on/off button?. The people barely spoke English let alone understood it. When I asked for a new one in exchange I was told they would fix mine or send me a refurbished model. When I demanded to speak to a supervisor none were available but ?One would call you in 24 hours?. When I finally spoke to one the next day his final solution to my problem was that I take the scanner back to the store of origin 40 miles away for a refund as he could not help me. After 5 toll phone calls and two road trips I did in fact return the scanner. I cannot comment on the scanner's ability however I can on Epson?s. Stay away from their products as their service division is non-existent!

• Reviewed by: bleub0y

  Strengths: Beautifully clear photo scans as good as the original photographs (with certain exceptions, see below), and true color values. Shallow learning curve; I was up and scanning in a few minutes.

  Weaknesses: A bit slow?very slow at high resolution?but acceptable at screen resolution, which is mostly how I use it.

  Overall: I have been working with the machine now for three months, and have had the opportunity to go through most of its functions. I was a bit trepidatious in the beginning. Having read all the reviews, I felt there must be a lot of defective units out there. But then, I thought, those who?d been stuck with one would be the most motivated to write. Mine has functioned perfectly from Day One. Long may this continue. I bought it to use mostly as a photo scanner, to scan my lifetime collection of color slides. It does a superb job at this. The scans are usually indistinguishable from the original slides, with identical color values. The only exceptions are slides with flaws. For instance, slides with very high contrast may not scan accurately?the machine may cut off part of the picture. Often, rotating the slide and trying again produces a better result. Slides where the subject is backlit, even slightly, will have this flaw magnified. However, this usually can be fixed with the included software, how well depending on how much time one wishes to spend on an individual shot. Obviously, flawed photos aren't often those I'm most interested in preserving in the first place. I compared scanning photo prints with scans of the negatives from which they were printed. The latter were invariably superior: clearer, and with better color. This, I judge, is not the machine?s fault, but the photo printer?s. In this instance, the scans were superior to the prints. I did not get particularly good results scanning newspaper clippings or B&W line art using the machine?s settings for those items. The print was often unreadable and the line art incoherent. However, scanning them again as photographs produced much better results. I was thrilled to discover I now had fax capability simply by using the ?Copy? button (printer icon) and forwarding the scan to my computer?s fax utility. Sending multi-page faxes took a bit more headscratching. One must first make a multi-page PDF, then send that to fax.Altogether, I think this $200 Epson has so far proved a thoroughly worthwhile purchase for a home hobbyist like me. If it breaks, maybe I?ll go for the $500 one. Or even the $700 one. Maybe.

• Reviewed by: rfsjr

  Strengths: Excellent uncorrected color balance and image quality; true to the original transparencies. Easy to use trays for 35mm, and the 2-1/4 tray is especially nice to prevent curling of film.

  Weaknesses: Slow scanning, but well within the range of Canon, HP, Microtek and others I have used

  Overall: Unless you are planning to do hundreds of professional scans a day, this is an excellent option for multi-function scanning of negatives, film positives, and flat documents. The software is very workable, especially in professional mode where you have good flexibility to make corrections (color, density, etc.) in the initial scan. I especially like the trays to hold film; these are very easy to use. I bring images right into Photoshop CS, and this is also seemless. The 4490 is no louder than most scanners I have used. It does take up a bit of real estate on the desk compared to some of the slim scanners on the market, but that is a small price to pay for the excellent function this offers. Within this price range, this is as good or better than any other scanner offering the ability to scan film positives and negatives.

• Reviewed by: gooru

  Strengths: Scans medium format film, great feature set

  Weaknesses: Defective units seem common, horrible warranty service

  Overall: Due to a great deal after rebate and the awesome feature set (especially scanning medium format negatives), I bought this scanner refurbished from Epson. Big mistake. The first unit arrived and was broken, producing a loud grinding noise and not scanning properly. Epson promptly replaced it with another unit. That one worked for a week or so and then broke just outside of the 30-day return window. They sent me to a local independent service center to have it fixed under warranty. The service center held onto the scanner for 1.5 weeks before calling to say it was fixed. However, it wasn't fixed. It had the exact same problem. After a ridiculous amount of time spent on the phone with Epson and traveling to and from the service center (it's more than an hour of travel time each way), I am left with a broken scanner and the requirement that I take it into the service center yet again to have it fixed. I am truly fed up with Epson's service and will never buy another Epson scanner.

• Reviewed by: Impulse

  Strengths: Easy setup. Quality scans!

  Overall: My EPSON 4490 was up and running in less than 5 minutes. The installation process was uncomplicated. I tested both B&W and color documents and they scanned nicely. The scanning of a document for OCR went without a glitch. I have not used the slide scanner. The EPSON 4490 definitely scans faster than Visioneer 7600.