Plustek OS1180 - Flat Scanner for Graphics and Documents in A3 Format, Design Suitable for Libraries, Schools or Small Offices - Scanning A3 Documents in Approximately 9 Seconds

I absolutely love this scanner. I have been working to diminish my stuffed file drawers by throwing away what I don't need and scanning what I want to keep. Some of the keepers were newspaper clippings and other larger items that my other scanner couldn't accommodate--other than scanning them in pieces. Thus began my search for a large-format scanner. Is this the best large-format scanner on the market? That depends on your criteria and how much you're willing to spend. Here's why it is the best for me. 1) If you compare the prices of large-format scanners, this is an unbelievable bargain. If you're trying to scan fine art, it may not be what you need. For my purposes of having high-def, clear copies of precious but mundane items, it was a screamin' deal. 2) This has a great user interface and is fairly intuitive and easy to use. It took me a little while (maybe 20-30 minutes) to figure out exactly how everything worked, which I consider not bad at all. It also has excellent instructions. 3) It offers a lot of fine tuning, with options of color/BW, level of definition/dpi, JPG/PDF, etc. 4) I initially couldn't get it to work and was ready to send it back. I called tech support, and I got a human. Not a human after a recorded menu. A real human answered the phone. The kind and knowledgeable tech support rep who answered the phone walked me through troubleshooting, and I discovered a huge, embarrassing, total rookie error. I hadn't fully plugged in the USB cable. The rep was totally kind about it. 5) Most importantly, this scanner creates clear, high-quality scans. Yay! Mission accomplished. (If you found this review helpful, I'd really appreciate if you would click the "Helpful" button. Thanks so much for reading! Liz)

This scanner is fantastic, especially at this price range. Stop stitching together 8 1/2 X 11 scans ! The high resolution settings are great. Scans are fast. Controls are comprehensive. You can fudge your way through it by just pressing buttons and clicking here and there. The quick guide is effective too. Super value for the money. A must for comic book artists drawing at 10 X 15. I cut off 1/2 inch from m by 11 X 17 boards to allow the full page to sit flat. After three months of use, I’m quite satisfied.

UPDATE 12/2020: After 2½ years of reliable service I have just replaced this with the more advanced/expensive Plustek OpticPro A320L. The reason is that the CCD scanning of the A320L can give better results than the CIS scanning for this model on certain kinds of materials, including some that I find myself needing to scan now. The Amazon listing for the A320L provides a brief explanation. To lean more just google for "CIS vs CCD scanning". I want to emphasize that for a very wide range of scanning needs this OpticSlim 1180 has been entirely satisfactory. The criticisms that the scans are "too dark" are a mystery to me. You have complete control over how dark or light the scans are in the software that comes with it and if you want lighter scans it's a very simple adjustment. ORIGINAL REVIEW 7/2017: In terms of function this is a pretty basic scanner. You can get one for one-fifth the price that is comparable in every respect -- EXCEPT that its scan area is only half as big. This seems to be the least expensive large-area flatbed scanner out there by a considerable margin, and it will serve very well for most purposes. In general I'm a bit wary about color fidelity on LED scanners, but it doesn't seem to be much of a problem with this one. I'm uploading two scans of a standard IT-8.7/IS-12641 color calibration target. One was made with basic scanning s/w and the other with VueScan. (No prizes for guessing which is which.) What this tells me is that the OS1180 is entirely adequate for any but the very most demanding of reflective-media scanning tasks. But if you want high-quality scans you have to have high-quality software. And you won't find it growing on trees or lying in the street. That to say that you need to figure the price of VueScan or some comparable package (if there is any) into the total cost if you want quality scans of high-quality materials. The scanner comes with a CD containing the manual in PDF form, the driver, a copy of ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint, and miscellaneous scanner utility s/w. There is a new driver (actually two, one for Mac and one for PC) on the Plustek Web site, which is supposed to provide improved color scans. (The scans I'm posting are made with it.) Installation from the CD went pretty smoothly on my Win 10 PC. But with the new driver it took me a lot of tries to get it to install without stirring up Norton Security. Neither the old driver nor the new has been entirely stable. At random times the scanner stops working properly in any of a variety of ways. It's necessary to close the driver and re-start the scanner, which usually does the trick. It's not a major problem but it happens often enough to be pretty annoying. One of the big uses for a large scanner is to scan books, two pages at a time. The ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint that ships with the scanner is probably the best of the "lite" OCR apps and works well for double-page scanning. Although bundled with the OS1180 it will work with other scanners as well, if you have any. In theory the scanner has four "built-in" scanning functions, actuated by buttons: scan, e-mail, OCR and PDF. I've had no luck with them; they produce some scanner activity followed by a "generic error" pop-up message. It's probably possible to get them to function if you work hard enough with the software, but I haven't bothered.

First off, this thing is a bit big - well, it has a big footprint - but it is very thin & light, so it's easy to stash out of the way when not in use. Works great on a Mac (M1-2 & Intel). Reasonably fast, good colour accuracy, does 1200dpi. A magnitude less expensive than anything else comparable. Need to scan larger documents? Get this scanner and you're all set.

El producto bien, 2 estrellas por utilizar correos express para el envío, posiblemente la peor empresa de reparto de toda España

I am totally happy with this product, it can truely scan very high quality images. There are various settings available to fine tune the image as you wish and you can save presets based on your preferences.

Le choix de se scanner à plat au format A3 correspond tout a fait à mes activités. La prise en main m'a parue facile, il faut bien sûr faire quelques essais pour optimiser les résultats.

The scanner is easy to setup, fast and produces very crisp and clear images. It takes a bit of practice to sometimes find the right settings for your source material. It seems to struggle with certain colour palettes, especially darker sections of an image. In one test case, my cheap Epson scanner on top of the printer produced a more pleasant result than this more premium model. Normally, I don't like to use any filters or enchancements from the scanner software and prefer to do everything manually in an editing program. However, I found without using "auto density" feature the scan would produce a very washed out scan. Overall, this is a good budget scanner but it's probably not for me. I am in the process of returning this and have bought the big brother model, the A320E - which is a CCD type scanner (this is CIS) and should produce richer colour palettes than OS1180.

A3、A4の図面をスキャンして保存しています。 やりやすいです。