The new Epson Perfection V350 photo scanner includes many of the tools found on much more expensive scanners, and it comes at a decent suggested retail price of $150. It's part of a new class of Perfection photo scanners that Epson has introduced to bring high-quality photo scanning to the masses.

The V350's CCD can capture resolutions of up to 4,800X9,600 dpi and rich 48-bit color. These numbers translate into sharp and realistic scans of your photos. Epson has also included a series of correction technologies to help you restore old or damaged photos. Easy Photo Fix will restore color brightness to faded photos, while Advanced Digital Dust Correction removes particles and artifacts from scanned images. Enhanced Backlight Correction can improve poorly exposed photos due to bad lighting.

This newly designed scanner features a trimmer design than the average flatbed, weighing in at just over 6 pounds with a footprint of 17X11 inches and a height of just under 3 inches. The V350's lid folds back 180 degrees and can rise up 1 inch to let you scan books and other non-flat objects.

Epson also includes an Automatic Film Loader (AFL) into the lid of the V350, so you can scan large quantities of film negatives. Simply stack strips of negatives with up to six frames on each, and the AFL feeds them into the scanner one by one. This is a handy way to archive your entire photo collection in a relatively short time.

Even though it's billed as a photo scanner, the V350 has an 8-1/2X11-7/10-inch scanning bed to scan in documents as well. Setting up the USB 2.0 scanner took little time, as we simply installed the software and plugged the scanner into an available USB 2.0 port.

There are four quick-scan buttons in the bottom corner of the V350 that make it easy to send a scan to a printer or convert it to a PDF file. Epson packages a well-rounded software bundle that includes ArcSoft PhotoImpression 5 for editing photos, ABBYY FineReader Sprint Plus software and Epson's own Creativity Suite for managing and sharing scanned images.

With a respectable price and a good range of tools, the Epson Perfection V350 photo scanner is a nice choice for archiving and repairing your old photograph collection.


Pros:  AFL, several image-repair technologies included
Cons:  Less-expensive options are available

Warranty
1 year, limited