Umax - Astra 4700 + TPU4500 review

Umax offers a two-part solution for scanning; its scanner and the optional transparency adapter. The scanner can be bought on its own for around £100. The adapter sits like an ice-hockey puck on the glass of the flat-bed and can handle a variety of media, from 35mm slides to negatives in several sizes. Many of the transparency adapters included with entry-level scanners are pretty cursory and this device is better made than most.

The design of the Astra 4700 is fairly conventional, but with only three special-function buttons at the front. These enable one-touch scanning, copying and e-mail, but other tasks have to be initiated from within the scanning software.

The Umax driver looks slightly simplistic at first sight, but a strip of extra buttons, initially hidden, broadens its scope. It can, in fact, handle most of the tasks you might set it. The scanner comes bundled with MGI's PhotoSuite and the PaperCom document manager. Both of these applications are useful in their own right and work well with the scanner.

Scanning speed for the Astra 4700 was quite impressive, with the 8 by 8-inch print completing in a group-leading seven seconds, but scanning the 35mm slides took over a minute, which was not so quick. The A4 text scan, important for OCR work, took just 13 seconds.

Image quality was reasonable, with fair reproduction of colours, though darker hues could look a little lifeless. Reproduction of line art was a little better than we had expected, and better than the subjective results our sample images suggested. Overall, this scanner and transparency adapter is a flexible combination at a competitive price.