The EPSON Perfection scanners are high quality scanners ideal for school use, producing high quality scans at an affordable price and both are easy to use and to set up. They provide ideal images for a wide range of tasks and projects and can be used to scan crisp, clear text ready to OCR. One big bonus with the Perfection scanners is the bundled software including: Adobe PhotoDeluxe for image editing, Newsoft Presto! PageManager for document management, Xerox Textbridge Classic for optical character recognition (OCR) to turn it into computer text, Adobe PageMill for creating and maintaining your website, Epson Instant Photo Print for scanning photos for instant reprints and enlargements and Epson Personal Copy which turns your printer and scanner into a full colour copier.

Installation is a simple matter of connecting the cable to the scanner and a spare USB port on your computer and then installing the drivers from the CD-Rom - no fiddly settings to adjust. he Perfection only has one button, invoking the easy-to-use software. There are no confusing options once the software has loaded - you simply choose what kind of image you’re scanning and the scan resolution you require and the software does the rest. A full colour preview takes less than seven seconds and a 300dpi (dots per inch) colour scan just over 20 seconds. The colour reproduction is excellent, even at low resolutions. The scanner itself is compact, not much bigger than the glass surface, yet it’s no piece of flimsy plastic either; it’s robust and should more than handle the odd classroom knock or bump.

Epson’s Perfection scanners far exceeded my expectations and either model will prove very handy for a school. I liked the 1200U so much I went out and bought one for myself! Highly recommended.

Epson Perfection 610U and 1200U

For Windows PCs and Macs

Price: pound;119 (610U); pound;170 (1200U)

Online star rating

Suitability for purpose *****

Ease of use *****

Design ****

Quality of output *****

Value for money *****