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Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 July 2022I wanted an A3 scanner for cataloguing large books and papers. This is pretty much the only low cost scanner I've found and it is definitely a device that I have conflicting views over.
On the plus side - it is an A3 flatbed scanner. Unlike A3 multifunction printers, it isn't the size (and weight) of a behemoth. Nor does it have ink cartridges so if you buy one second hand and the seller posts it with ink installed, well let me assure you doesn't end well. And, it supports WIA - this in in direct contradiction to the product page (and at least one review), and as we'll see support itself.
The lid is fully detachable, so if you need to scan something particularly chunky, you can take the lid completely off.
Also a bonus is the cost as I mentioned.
Unlike my other scanners, this one requires separate power, but it does go into standby after a few minutes of not being used which is good (although I really wonder how much power it could be using sitting there doing nothing anyway).
Finally, it does scan - I have tested with WIA and with TWAIN successfully, with caveats.
It isn't plug and play so you have to install the driver, which also installs an annoying scanning utility that opens up a ugly window each time you start your computer. The software installation isn't onerous really but it's annoying having to then disable that utility.
Now for the not so good bits.
Firstly and most importantly, colours aren't accurate. If I scan a book cover with my CanoScan LiDE 220 (or older LiDE 100), the resulting image looks like the book I have scanned. If I do the same with the 1180, then either the colours are too bright (e.g. yellow becomes orange) or too dark (e.g. blue becomes black). Either way, comparing the scan versus the original item has a glaring difference - you can see the examples I attached to this review. This happens regardless of using WIA or TWAIN (in fact TWAIN is worse because it seems to smooth out colours, so a scruff book cover suddenly looks quite new).
I contacted Plustek support about this and waited two weeks for a response. Then I contacted them again, to receive a stock reply of "install the latest driver" (I already am running the latest driver) and "Please note there is no support of WIA but only TWAIN.". Interesting - I've been using the scanner almost exclusively via WIA (although hilariously the WIA scanner is identified as "A3 Scanner(2B2)" with the manufacturer "Product".
(As an aside, as I write this a thought occurs to me - the bottom of the cover of my Canon scanners is white, this Plustek one is black - I wonder if this has an impact? Certainly the lights on the Plustek seem dimmer than the ones in the Canon so I wonder if this is the cause of the colour differences.)
So that is the second downside, customer support is poor and doesn't seem to know the capabilities of their own product. (The download package that the support representative told me to install clearly includes 32bit and 64bit WIA drivers)
In addition, the WIA driver seems pretty unstable. Turn the scanner off and then back on (or wake it from sleep) and WIA will fail to connect to the scanner, reporting it as offline. Restarting the WIA service (or just restarting Windows) is the cure. And sometimes it doesn't even list the scanner, again restarting the service (or Windows) cures this.
Another WIA issue - corrupt images. If scanning with TWAIN, I am used to crashes if you try to scan a huge area with a large resolution (which also makes me wonder why the heck the TWAIN driver is still 32bit). WIA I don't see crash so much, but what I have seen with this scanner is if I scan an image that is too large and at too high a DPI, the image is corrupt - the bottom of the image will either be omitted, or replicated as one more bands across the rest of the image. I don't know if this is a problem with WIA or with the scanner driver, I usually just reduce the DPI a touch until I get a proper image.
Oh yes, and when scanning with WIA and accepting the auto size the scan seems to be ever so slightly wider so that you end up with black stripe down the right hand side of the image. Again, not something that I see with other scanners.
Physically, the scanner feels cheap. I suppose it is, but it feels it. And it is really noisy when scanning. None of my CanoScans are close to the noise of this thing. It is slow too, but given it has a much higher resolution (not to mention surface area) than my A4 scanners, this I can forgive.
All in all, this scanner has a lot of issues and if it was the only scanner available to me, I frankly wouldn't give it the time of day. But as I have cheaper yet superior A4 scanners for the bulk of my work and only have to use this for the oversized items and as I haven't a chance of getting an A3 scanner at this price point (unless I figure out how to get SCSI into modern computers and buy something from yesteryear second hand) then I have reluctantly opted to keep this scanner. But I don't recommend it... I'll just have to save the pennies and try to get a decent CCD scanner, but not from Plustek.
I wanted an A3 scanner for cataloguing large books and papers. This is pretty much the only low cost scanner I've found and it is definitely a device that I have conflicting views over.
On the plus side - it is an A3 flatbed scanner. Unlike A3 multifunction printers, it isn't the size (and weight) of a behemoth. Nor does it have ink cartridges so if you buy one second hand and the seller posts it with ink installed, well let me assure you doesn't end well. And, it supports WIA - this in in direct contradiction to the product page (and at least one review), and as we'll see support itself.
The lid is fully detachable, so if you need to scan something particularly chunky, you can take the lid completely off.
Also a bonus is the cost as I mentioned.
Unlike my other scanners, this one requires separate power, but it does go into standby after a few minutes of not being used which is good (although I really wonder how much power it could be using sitting there doing nothing anyway).
Finally, it does scan - I have tested with WIA and with TWAIN successfully, with caveats.
It isn't plug and play so you have to install the driver, which also installs an annoying scanning utility that opens up a ugly window each time you start your computer. The software installation isn't onerous really but it's annoying having to then disable that utility.
Now for the not so good bits.
Firstly and most importantly, colours aren't accurate. If I scan a book cover with my CanoScan LiDE 220 (or older LiDE 100), the resulting image looks like the book I have scanned. If I do the same with the 1180, then either the colours are too bright (e.g. yellow becomes orange) or too dark (e.g. blue becomes black). Either way, comparing the scan versus the original item has a glaring difference - you can see the examples I attached to this review. This happens regardless of using WIA or TWAIN (in fact TWAIN is worse because it seems to smooth out colours, so a scruff book cover suddenly looks quite new).
I contacted Plustek support about this and waited two weeks for a response. Then I contacted them again, to receive a stock reply of "install the latest driver" (I already am running the latest driver) and "Please note there is no support of WIA but only TWAIN.". Interesting - I've been using the scanner almost exclusively via WIA (although hilariously the WIA scanner is identified as "A3 Scanner(2B2)" with the manufacturer "Product".
(As an aside, as I write this a thought occurs to me - the bottom of the cover of my Canon scanners is white, this Plustek one is black - I wonder if this has an impact? Certainly the lights on the Plustek seem dimmer than the ones in the Canon so I wonder if this is the cause of the colour differences.)
So that is the second downside, customer support is poor and doesn't seem to know the capabilities of their own product. (The download package that the support representative told me to install clearly includes 32bit and 64bit WIA drivers)
In addition, the WIA driver seems pretty unstable. Turn the scanner off and then back on (or wake it from sleep) and WIA will fail to connect to the scanner, reporting it as offline. Restarting the WIA service (or just restarting Windows) is the cure. And sometimes it doesn't even list the scanner, again restarting the service (or Windows) cures this.
Another WIA issue - corrupt images. If scanning with TWAIN, I am used to crashes if you try to scan a huge area with a large resolution (which also makes me wonder why the heck the TWAIN driver is still 32bit). WIA I don't see crash so much, but what I have seen with this scanner is if I scan an image that is too large and at too high a DPI, the image is corrupt - the bottom of the image will either be omitted, or replicated as one more bands across the rest of the image. I don't know if this is a problem with WIA or with the scanner driver, I usually just reduce the DPI a touch until I get a proper image.
Oh yes, and when scanning with WIA and accepting the auto size the scan seems to be ever so slightly wider so that you end up with black stripe down the right hand side of the image. Again, not something that I see with other scanners.
Physically, the scanner feels cheap. I suppose it is, but it feels it. And it is really noisy when scanning. None of my CanoScans are close to the noise of this thing. It is slow too, but given it has a much higher resolution (not to mention surface area) than my A4 scanners, this I can forgive.
All in all, this scanner has a lot of issues and if it was the only scanner available to me, I frankly wouldn't give it the time of day. But as I have cheaper yet superior A4 scanners for the bulk of my work and only have to use this for the oversized items and as I haven't a chance of getting an A3 scanner at this price point (unless I figure out how to get SCSI into modern computers and buy something from yesteryear second hand) then I have reluctantly opted to keep this scanner. But I don't recommend it... I'll just have to save the pennies and try to get a decent CCD scanner, but not from Plustek.Images in this review
