HP - Scanjet 4570c review

Several unexpected features single this scanner out from the crowd - though not all of them are good. For a start the device is much longer than most A4 scanners, with an extended lip at the front, into which is set a two-digit LCD display and no fewer than eight buttons. While the number display may be useful if you use the scanner for a lot of copying, and it may well be handy to switch between colour and greyscale scans from the button panel, none of these extras is vital.

All the software supplied with the Scanjet is integrated into one HP application and this installs well, though it's not always easy to use. The scanner driver, in particular, has the annoying habit of resetting any parameters you set, at the end of a session. This makes it particularly awkward when you're using it from a third-party application, such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

The transparency scanner takes the form of a separate unit which you lay on the flatbed in the middle of a template which exactly fits the scan bed. It can scan three slides or a strip of negatives in one go, but is still not as easy to use as the built-in adapters fitted to other scanners.

The performance of the Scanjet 4570c was on a par with the Epson scanner on the print and text page tasks, but it completed the transparency scan in less than half the time, the fastest in thegroup. Image quality was good even at the default settings and it's only the irritating shortcomings in some of its software that holds it back.