Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-Speed Photo and Document Scanning System Black

I bought the Epson FastFoto FF-680W to digitise decades of family photos, and it has exceeded every expectation. This scanner is lightning fast (up to 30 photos in 30 seconds). The auto feeder means I don’t have to babysit the process. It even detects and scans the back of photos if there are handwritten notes, which is a brilliant touch for preserving family history. The scan quality is superb at 600 DPI, with crisp detail and vibrant colors. Faded prints come back to life thanks to the built-in colour restoration, and I love that the software saves both the original and enhanced versions so I always have a backup. The included FastFoto software is intuitive, making it easy to crop, rotate, and share scans directly to cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive. Beyond photos, it doubles as a powerful document scanner. Handling A4 pages, receipts, and even panoramic images. OCR support means I can turn scanned documents into searchable PDFs, which has been a huge time saver. Yes, the price is on the higher side, but if you have boxes of old photos or want a reliable all-in-one scanner, it’s worth every penny. It’s compact, easy to set up, and has quickly become one of my favorite tech purchases. I can finally share priceless memories with family without worrying about losing them to time. Highly recommended for anyone serious about preserving their photo collection.

With boxes of old prints of all sizes and from cameras of different quality that I wanted to scan to preserve for posterity and ease of viewing and sharing, this was the only option as scanning on a flatbed would take a lifetime. I was sceptical and it was not cheap but decided to go for it. Well, more than 15000 prints later I am still amazed by this machine. It was easy to set up, is easy to use and gives good results. Even scanning at maximum optical resolution (600 dpi) it is SO quick. A 36 print pack goes through in not much longer than it takes to get the next ones ready and pack the previous ones away so you really can digitise a lifetime of prints in a reasonable time. Feed jams are rare and only caused by prints with album glue residue or being lazy and trying to get different print sizes through in the same run (and to be fair the instructions say not to do this). The option to scan the back at the same time is a real bonus where information has been written on a photo. As the process of scanning is so quick I moved on to prints inherited from my Grandmother, the oldest being early 1900's with a lot of family history recorded on the back which has been automatically captured. The auto correct works well for most prints, and of course further editing can be done in Photoshop or Lightroom. It is very impressive on old, slightly faded prints (see examples). Black and white works as well as colour, and the option to create 2 copies of the scan - the original and a corrected one - automatically means that if you are not happy with the auto corrected version you have the original to work on as you wish. With the volume of scans I have done, and the age and poor storage of some of the originals I have had a few issues with lines on the scans that have been easily resolved by a quick clean of the scan area which is easy to do and good instructions are supplied. Really recommend this scanner if you have a lot of prints to digitise - the old photos have been looked at more on the computer by the family then they ever were in the boxes in the loft ! I have disposed of all the prints, saving quite a bit of space, but kept the negatives just in case.

The hardware is called fastfoto and to be fair it is, scanning lots of photos in a very short period of time. However there is a huge fundamental flaw in the fastfoto software, it doesn’t matter what settings you select for the scanning of your photos it will always use high compression JPG format as the output, resulting in really bad quality scans. Any dark areas of the photos show all sorts of ghosting where the jpg compression has taken place. I contacted Epson who have confirmed that this is how the software works and there is no plan to update it. The issue doesn’t manifest in smart scan which is the document scanning software that also comes with the kit. However scanning photos with this is a much more laborious process. As a result I would strongly suggest that no one touches this with a barge pole, shame as it has the potential to be so much better.

I have to say, I am very impressed with this scanner. I also have the cannon LIDE 400 and in my opinion the epson is a very good machione. It's fast, it gets the job done, the eco system is great ( I have an Epson printer so I just select which device to use). It switches on when I boot up my computer. Don't be put off by the USB protocal used, it does the job! Just make sure you download the correct driver i.e. V39 II not the original one! Other than that, it's a great scanner! PS - the Black Friday offer did sway it for me!

I upgraded to this scanner as I have a lot of negatives and pictures to scan. I have been a long time user of Epson scanners and would recommend them. This is easy to see up but the problem is the software. I loaded up the Epson software but I could not find the actual software to scan. However, that was not a problem as I was always going to use Silverfast. I had the cd disk and a code. Loaded it none times an it would not run. Checking on the internet I see this is a common problem, so I contacted Silverfast and they sent me a link and code for software to run. That did spoil the whole experience. On the plus side, the scanner comes with two sets of frames so you can load up mrenegatives or slides whilst waiting for others to scan. Downside is that the newer versions of this scanner did not have the wet scan frames. I can but a new kit from a third party but that's over £170. Shame. However, this is the best flat bed out there, just wish the problems were sorted before it is sold!!

Very pleased with this. I spent quite a while looking for a cheaper alternative but gave in and bought this one. I have many hundreds of photos to scan and it's working through them efficiently. It organises photos into folders based on date and description. It would be even better if it had more options for tagging sets of pictures but the simple options it offers are enough to get the job done. New batches of photos can be added to existing folders so I can scan them as I find them. The scans look as good as the originals. The software stores the original version and an automatically enhanced version, which is sometimes better, sometimes not, but it's good to have both and compare them. It also comes with document scanning software and that does an incredible job scanning receipts. It normally recognises them as receipts and manages to read the date off them somehow so I could, if I wanted or needed to, keep all my receipts in a brown paper bag and scan them whenever I got round to it. When plugged into the USB, the scanner works quickly enough at 600dpi and very quickly at 300dpi. On wifi it's noticeably slower and can easily lose the connection so I've ended up keeping it plugged in. Despite the very minor points mentioned, it's an excellent device and has already saved me hours of hassle.

This is not cheap, but you can probably sell it on after you've finished with it. It's a surprisingly classy piece of kit. Remarkably quick, scanning a whole batch of photos in a minute at 600dpi, enhancing them very nicely as it goes, putting them all into pre-labelled folders, and even dealing with curled up pics really well. I was very happy.

Epson Perfection V39 II. Easy to set up and use, plus it also produces good quality photo scans for the price. However I chose this model over and above the cheaper Canon LiDE 400 as Amazon specified it had WiFi, unfortunately when setting up the scanner I then realised it did not have WiFi as stated, which was a real let down as it really restricts where I can place the scanner.