Comments about HP Scanjet G4050 Photo Flatbed Scanner: I was looking for a scanner that would be able to handle all the photos that I like to experiment with and this has proved to be worth my buy. I like the design, the quality is exceptional, and it's a very light machine.

Accurate Color; Easy Setup; Excellent Software; Good Bit Depth; Good Resolution; Widely Compatible; Works on Network

I bought myself this to scan various things (old photos, documents and some sheet music ) and this does the job pretty well. It was a bit on the expensive side but I needed something that would give me good quality and I could trust that it would work well so I went for HP as they are well known for...

good quality scanning

software is rubbish; can take for ever to scan an image

Though the world and its mum have moved from film to digital photography, there's been some innovative launches for creative pros in the scanner market in the last six months. Epson's Perfection V700 and v750 included two lenses – one for film and one for reflectives – and now HP has introduced...

Six-colour scanning; Excellent colour capture

Slow; Mediocre dust-&-scratches/anti-fade technology

Buying a dedicated scanner for home usage is not very feasible these days, considering the great deals currently available on MFDs (Multi-Function Devices, Scanners+Printers+Copiers).

Home scanners have shown little technical innovation over the past few years. However, HP's Scanjet G4050 has broken the mould with the first so-called six-colour scanner, using two lamps to provide RGB feedback plus extra colour information.

HP's G4050 flatbed scanner employs a novel two-pass technique to extract maximum detail.

Build quality; fundamental scan quality is good

Speed; poor control software; large design

The Negatives to computer prints are washed out on some. may be the negatives. the photo scans are excellent. It's not a speedy scanner, but I was looking for quality and it has excellent quality scanning old photos.

Good quality product which does what it is supposed to and does it well.

For pure picture quality, you'll have a hard time finding a consumer-friendly scanner with this level of performance. It includes six-color, 96-bit scanning to ensure your images maintain rich colors and deep blacks even at very high resolutions.

It will batch scan a lot 35mm strips at a time, that was my rational for buying it over the epson variant which only does two strips of negatives at a time. The stock software is pretty crummy, unlike the epson software (I use the v700 at work), so I bought vuescan software.