Flatbed Scanner Recommendations in 2025

My Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner died on me and I’m not seeing a lot of good options on the market right now. A replacement one is now $350 (+tax), which is more than I paid for mine less than 2 years ago. And I’m not too keen to pay that much for a scanner that doesn’t last.

Does anyone have any recommendation for a scanner that scans album artwork and CDs well? Need 600 dpi for the artwork and 1200 dpi for the CD matrices.

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CanoScan 9000F Mark II

That’s what I used to scan more than one hundred CDs and am content with the results

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Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s quite a bit more than the $350 it’d take to replace the dead scanner I have now. Even if it lasts forever, it’s out of my price range. Just out of curiosity, though, how long have you had it and do you use it for other things besides scanning in CDs?

Also, I’m not sure if it’s because your scans are at 300 dpi vs. 600 dpi for mine, but many of yours seemed to not be as crisp as the ones I was getting with the V600.

I had it for almost 10 years and first used it for scanning film, later CD cover art and very few vinyl.
Back then it cost about 200€ IIRC

Indeed my earlier scans are at 300dpi.

The recommended CanoScan 9000F Mark II is certainly a very good choice for high quality scans. It is a CCD scanner with a complex mirror and lens system. Such devices can only be found in a higher price segment.

Cheap scanners are almost always CIS scanner with RGB LEDs as light source. This causes coloured stripes on reflective surfaces (silver CDs or CD matrix), which are difficult to control even with diffuser foils.
example

But CIS scanners also have advantages:
They are less sensitive to focus inaccuracy, that is, when the object is not completely flat. Even at some distance from the glass, the image is still sharp.
Since the incidence of light on such devices is very flat, even the smallest elevations cast long shadows. This makes tiny codes embossed into the plastic visible, whereas a CCD scanner would hide them completely. However, this leads to a more unsightly appearance of corrugated paper than is the case in nature.

Resolution is no problem at all available models.
Colour fidelity is rather poor at scanners with LED lighting (my scanner¹), but I have now given up the idea of ​​"true colours" for many other reasons.

¹) I’ve got a Epson Perfection V370 Photo (below €100). I would not recommend this model, although I still use it and do not plan to replace it as long as it’s working. However, I currently have the ability to scan CDs with a reflective surface on a friend’s scanner (a very old device with a continuous light source)

Therefore, I have no recommendation for you but things to consider.

EDIT: example for focus robustness ← print behind (above) tray, panels beneath tray show perspective distortion, but still sharp

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I have a cheap (€90) Canon CanoScan LIDE 300 and I’m very happy with it, as long as I scan at 1200 dpi and don’t use any of the automatic clean-up settings in the driver. (I scan through GIMP and do all edits there.)

This scanner does require everything to be flat on the glass plate, as everything else will be out of focus, so that’s a problem if you want to scan the image behind a glued-on tray.

Here you can see an example: Release “Place 54” by Hocus Pocus - Cover art - MusicBrainz.

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The Wikipedia article you linked above disagrees with this. It says CCDs have greater depth of field.

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Any idea what failed? My V600 is about a year and a half old. I’d like to know what to watch for.

You must have found a good deal. $350 was the best price I found in August of '23.

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That’s definitely a much better deal than what they’re selling for now. I’d definitely pick it up for under $300 if it lasts 10 years!

Thanks for the refresher. I had forgotten about CCD vs. CIS, but I remembering coming across it in my initial research. I think I probably need to stay with a CCD scanner, given that the majority of the scanning I have left is the CDs I’m going back and scanning.

That would be a problem for any future digipack albums I buy. Thanks for the info.

I have no idea. Some sort of motor in it. Normally, when you turn it on, the carriage runs back and forth and it makes all those warmup noises. I just went to turn it on yesterday and the green light came on, but no noises. Won’t communicate with the software on the computer either.

The manual troubleshooting was no help. I tried locking and then re-unlocking the transportation lock on the back, but that didn’t help. I’ve tried unplugging all the cords and plugging them back in, as well as connecting to another computer. Nothing.

I bought mine in April of 2023 for $300 (+tax). I have scanned in artwork for about 1,400 CDs (just going back to scan the matrices and jewel cases now, plus whatever new CDs I buy), so maybe my expectations of longevity are too high? It certainly seems like a short duration to me for the amount of money paid, though.

Once I finished this project, I had hoped to scan in some old family photos as well.

Edit: it has sat on the same side table connected to the same computer since I got it, so it doesn’t get moved around.

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honestly I would expect a scanner to last a lot longer than that - I think there might be some value in trying to raise it with either Epson directly or by speaking to the retailer you bought it from

Good luck! I really miss my Epson scanner :frowning: but my Plustek seems to do the job well enough for now :slight_smile:

CCD all the way btw!

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Yes, interesting. Thanks for highlighting this fact.
I’ve checked product specifications of my Epson Perfection V370 and it’s probably also a CCD scanner (only hint: “optical resolution 4800 dpi with Epson MatrixCCD®”). Looks like a never used a CIS scanner.
What I have described is rather the difference between continuous light source and LED.

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The contact form on the Epson website doesn’t work, but I plan to call them next week. Don’t have high hopes on that route, though. I had reached out to them when my scanner was a little over a year old (so past the 1-year warranty mark) when it was scanning images in blurred and they were of no help. Unplugging and plugging the scanner back in fixed that issue, thankfully.

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I don’t think so. My V600 replaced an Epson Perfection 2450 that was a reliable workhorse for over 20 years, scanning CDs, photos from negative/slide film, and who knows what else?

I’m with @sound.and.vision, I might raise the issue with Epson and see if they can/will do anything.

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I use a Canon Pixma two-in-one scanner, works fine, and cheap or free!

Threads like this always make think I need to be more diligent and get something better… but if I’m going to spend up big I want to get something that can scan LP’s. I think that is still out of reach (for an average earner) in 2025.


P.S. You might want to check consumer guarantee laws in your country as well.

Here (New Zealand) the length/existence of a warranty is mostly irrelevant - a store has the duty to supply items of “reasonable” quality/length of life to the customer, under our Consumer Guarantees Act.

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Thanks for the tip, but I don’t think we have anything like that here in the US. Unlike much of the rest of the world that has the government looking after the interests of its citizens, here in the US the government’s main job is to look after the interest of corporations. In fact, corporations are legally deemed people here (look it up).

I plan on reaching out to Epson this week when they’re open, but I don’t have high hopes based on my last interaction.

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I use HP DeskJet 2700 All-in-One and the Scanner X application.

I did not find its official homepage, is it the same kind as or does it include the awesome SANE on Linux, that can operate with old scanners (like my Canon CanoScan N1240U), that are no longer supported by current Windows?