Epson FastFoto FF-680W - Review 2022

Rejoice! You won't have to scan photo prints 1 by 1 anymore, or take chances having them ripped in your scanner's certificate feeder. The Epson FastFoto FF-680W ($599.99) is a worthy successor to the Epson FastFoto FF-640, which was the commencement sheet-feed scanner that could quickly scan a stack of photos with a minimal chance of them getting torn, creased, or otherwise damaged. Geared largely toward people who want to digitize and archive their photo-print collections (recall shoeboxes full of snapshots), the FastFoto FF-680W does considerably ameliorate at scanning documents than the FastFoto FF-640. This makes it a much more than versatile home scanner, 1 that won't become irrelevant once you've completed scanning your snapshot drove. It also makes it a PCMag Editors' Choice for photo-centric household scanners.

A Photo-Happy Sheet-Feed Scanner

Its photo wizardry nonetheless, the matte-black FastFoto FF-680W looks like a typical desktop certificate scanner. It measures 6.9 by 11.vii past 6.7 inches (HWD) when closed. It has a top tray that curves down to feed the automatic certificate feeder (ADF), and a bottom tray that curves upward to hold scanned photos or documents. You tin can accommodate plastic guides at the feed slot to fit unlike widths of paper, with marks for 5-by-7-inch and 4-by-6-inch photos. Unlike the Epson FastFoto FF-640, the FF-680W supports Wi-Fi as well every bit USB connectivity.

On the forepart of the scanner, about the correct, is a vertical line of buttons identified by icons, topped by an on/off push button...

Epson FastFoto FF-680W

Others include Wi-Fi, double-feed detection skip (if scanning stops because a double feed was detected, press it to resume scanning), slow mode (to slow down browse speed following a paper jam), and scan. Rather than immediately starting a scan, pressing the scan push button launches the FastFoto software—the main interface, plus a pop-up dialog box that lets you classify a batch of photos by year and other identifying info.

Eyeing the FastFoto Software

The FastFoto software saves scanned images in subfolders in a FastFoto binder in your Pictures directory. When you lot initiate a scan, you are given the option to create a subfolder for a batch of photos named by year (or decade) and month (or season)—each chosen from pull-down menus—and then add some descriptive text such as a place or event (for instance, "1986_Winter_NYC"). You lot can get out either of the first two fields blank.

From the software'south Settings button, you lot can select the resolution (300dpi or 600dpi), too as opt for an enhanced browse, which applies FastFoto's automatic enhancement. Y'all can practise the enhanced scan in add-on to or instead of a scan that matches the print equally closely as possible. Y'all can browse photos to your choice of JPG or TIFF format. When the browse is done, thumbnails of the images in your batch announced in FastFoto's principal pane.

Epson FastFoto FF-680W

With FastFoto, you tin rotate, crop, enhance, or restore images, as well equally apply red-eye reduction. You can also upload images directly to sites such as Dropbox and Google Bulldoze.

You are not limited to scanning photo prints with FastFoto; you can scan postcards and other graphics, as well. For example, I have used information technology to scan amateur radio QSL cards, the postcards that hams apply to confirm two-way contact with other stations. Often, the front of the card contains a photograph or other graphical image, while the back will have a information box with information almost the contact (phone call sign, time, date, frequency, and more than). You tin ready FastFoto to scan both the front end and back of an image automatically; if the back is bare, the FF-680W won't bother to scan it.

Assessing Scan Quality and Speed

All told, I scanned hundreds of photograph prints in multiple batches with the FF-680W. Well-nigh of the prints were at to the lowest degree 2 decades erstwhile and ranged widely in quality and preservation. For most, I let FastFoto apply its enhancements and save both the raw scan and the enhanced version. The scanner did well in converting these prints into digital course. In full general, the enhanced versions—to which the software applied tweaks to contrast, brightness, and saturation—were more pleasing than the originals. The enhancements didn't work miracles, but they did well as a quick gear up. Most of the photos I scanned were three-by-five-inch or iv-past-half-dozen-inch prints, though I likewise scanned a batch of 4-by-11.v-inch panoramas.

Epson gives the speed of scanning photos with the FastFoto FF-680W as 1 impress per second at 300dpi and one impress every iii seconds at 600dpi. In my test runs, the actual time spent scanning the prints at both resolutions was close to the Epson claims; I used a stack of 36 4-past-six-inch prints.

When you include warmup and relieve times, though, scanning can take considerably longer. At 300dpi, the FF-680W took 49 seconds to scan the prints, and ane minute and 51 seconds (1:51) to both scan and save them. At 600dpi, it took 2 minutes to browse the same batch of 36 prints, and iv:08 to both browse and relieve them. This, especially at 300dpi, was slower than its predecessor, the Epson FastFoto FF-640, which has the same rated speeds every bit the FastFoto FF-680. With the earlier model, I'd scanned a larger (50-impress) stack at 300dpi in just 43 seconds (eight-tenths of a second per print, compared with the FastFoto FF-680's 1.iii seconds per print), while to scan and save to file took 1:35. (That's 1.9 seconds per print, compared with three.08 seconds per print for the FastFoto FF-680.)

At 600dpi, the FastFoto FF-640 was nevertheless faster, but the difference was significantly less. That model took 2:22 (2.viii seconds per print) to scan its stack, and 5:20 (6.4 seconds per print) to both scan and salve. The FastFoto FF-680 averaged 3.four seconds per print merely to browse, and 6.8 seconds per print to scan and save.

In our testing, the FastFoto FF-680W proved slower than its predecessor, although it was notwithstanding close to its rated speeds. To put information technology in perspective, all the same, the FastFoto FF-680W scans and saves photos a lot faster than a flatbed photo scanner. (Our current Editors' Choice for a consumer flatbed photo scanner is the Epson Perfection V39.) We are non able to accurately exam their scanning speed for groups of photos, however; that'southward because the speed depends, in part, on how apace yous can open the flatbed's cover, remove the scanned photograph and add a new one, and press the scan command again.

It Scans Documents, Besides

I did all of my document-scanning testing with the FastFoto FF-680W coupled with the included Epson ScanSmart utility. For documents, the FastFoto FF-680W is rated at a speed of 45 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex (one-sided) scanning and 90 images per infinitesimal (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) scanning, where each side of a folio counts equally an paradigm. These ratings are typical of today's certificate scanners. They are based on what I call the raw scanning speed, the time information technology takes for the scanner to physically scan the sheets, excluding whatsoever time spent in warming up, or in post-scan processing before the scan is saved to file. In this manner, using our 25-page, 50-image examination document, I timed the FastFoto FF-680W in simplex at 50ppm, a bit meliorate than its rated speed.

For our official speed tests, we count any lag before the scan begins, and add together whatever mail-scan processing time, likewise. In scanning to a 200dpi grayscale image PDF, the FF-680W scanned the same text document in 38.5ppm in simplex and 69.8ppm in duplex, losing little time in handling ii-sided documents. Both are respectable times, if short of the scanner's rated speeds.

Epson FastFoto FF-680W

When I switched to scanning to searchable PDF format, which is generally considered the best format for archiving documents, it took 1:nineteen to scan the same document in duplex. That's definitely an improvement: I had non been able to go the FastFoto FF-640 to scan to searchable PDF at all when I reviewed information technology.

Good Character Recognition

The FastFoto FF-680W's OCR performance too proved considerably better than the FastFoto FF-640'south in our testing. OCR performance was boilerplate for certificate scanners; without error, information technology read and rendered both our Times New Roman and Arial exam pages, in converting the browse to a Give-and-take certificate, at sizes downward to 8 points. Its scanning of our grouping of less-common fonts was a mixed bag, with swell results with two of our five fonts, fair results with another, and some struggles with the other two. This, once more, was a very typical result for a document scanner. The FastFoto FF-640's OCR performance, on the other hand, was quite poor when I reviewed that scanner two years ago. It tended to run words together, sometimes even at larger type sizes. So OCR matters have gotten improve with this model, to be sure.

Although the FastFoto FF-680W'southward certificate-scanning power and its scan utlity are much improved over the first-generation model, it could use a more robust software selection for document scanning, particularly considering that this product is meant for households, and many home users won't have any sort of document-direction software.

Verdict? It's a Winner and a Keeper

Epson pioneered the photo-friendly canvas-feed scanner, and the FF-680W is a stride frontwards from the original FastFoto FF-640. Able to scan documents, merely with photograph scanning equally its forte, the Epson FastFoto FF-680W is primarily meant for home archivists who want to scan teeming stacks of photo prints.

It'southward slower at photograph scanning than the FastFoto FF-640, but it'south far more versatile, because it is much ameliorate at document scanning, which means you'll notwithstanding accept plenty of use for it in one case you lot've scanned through all your shoeboxes of old snaps. This makes it our Editors' Choice habitation photo-centric sheet-feed scanner—and a keeper afterward your big archiving job is washed.