Pandigital SCN02 Photolink One-Touch Scanner with Memory Card

I have scanned to date 2,500 photos with this scanner. I love it! It is very fast. I have just enough time to scan a photo, put the duplicate behind the pile I am scanning, get another one ready, by the time the first photo is done being scanned. I love this scanner. Be sure to scan the photos directly to your PC. If you cant, thats fine too. But I like to because I could see if 1) the scanner was working 2) the quality of the photos. Be warned - every photo I have scanned has an extra triangle of black on the left and right of the photo. Every photo. A big deal to me? Not really. I will be downloading a free application found on Google (not sure what its called yet! But I know they exist) to BATCH crop all photos scanned using this scanner. Sure I will lose a LITTLE bit of photo, but nothing to want to scan each photo and crop each photo by hand using a flat bed scanner. The quality isnt the best either, but I will be using Picasa to both Sharpen and Im feeling lucky settings to make the quality great. Also note: you will every once in a while notice vertical (or horizontal depending on how you look at it) lines in your scanned photos. Dont use the plastic sheet that it comes with. I threw it away without even trying (based on reviews here). That would take forever. If you notice lines, follow the 3 steps to clean your scanner. Itll work great. I usually had to do this every 50-100 photos, but once I got through about 300 photos without cleaning. Other times, it was every 10 photos until you got a good clean. BEST TIP I CAN GIVE YOU: CALIBRATING YOUR SCANNER with the included calibrator is the best way to get great results and no vertical lines. You may have to calibrate a couple of times in a row. This is why I recommend scanning directly to your computer - you get to see the quality right away before you scan 100 photos all with a noticeable line through them :)

I had ordered the new, larger model but I didnt know how long I would have to wait so I canceled that order and reluctantly bought this model. I knew this had to be better than than manual flatbed scanner method that I had used for the past 15 years so I thought it was worth a try, even though some of the reviews made me a bit skeptical. Overall, I am very happy with this device. Not only was I able to complete a huge scanning project for someone else, I also managed to scan almost all of the family photos, at least the ones without the thick, instamatic rails and backings. While scanning is still my least favorite part of the creative process, it is much better than than using my all- in-one desktop scanner. You still can have a lot of work to do if you dont take your time and feed the photos straight. It takes about 15 to 20 seconds for a photo to process, depending on the size, before you can scan another photo and there is nothing you can do during this time except have the next photo ready to go. If you wait about three seconds after a photo goe through to start another, you can usually preloaded the next but this does not always work and when it doesnt, you risk then next photo going through a little crooked if you are not careful. Probably best to wait as the instructions suggest but I can manage this quite well. Also, I should mention as other reviewers have, you do not need to use the feeder sleeve. Ive never used it so I dont know how it affects the scan quality but I cant imagine it being better to use it. If you are scanning very delicate photos or clippings then maybe you would want to use it. The photos scan to a 250 MB memory card that come with the scanner. While that does not seem like much space, I have never filled it and I typically scan batches of 150 photos before dumping them on the computer. I was a bit surprised to learn that the native JPG format that the images are saved in is not compatible with a Mac. I had to install a $20 batch converter to get them into a format that iPhoto recognized. I was a little disappointed to have this extra step but there are some advantages to using a batch converter to give all of the images a meaningful file name and put them in the desired size and format so in the end, Im glad iPhoto would not read the native format. So far, I have scanned just over 1000 photos and with the exception of a couple early scans that streaked a little bit, I have not had any issues and the quality of the scan is just about as good as the original photo. Once I get the photos on the Mac I wipe the memory card clean for the next batch. I am still looking forward ton the release of the larger model that is supposed to be even better than this one. However, if you get forced into this model in the meantime, I think you may be pleased with the results.

This is a useful product, as long as your expectations are reasonable. While the scan quality is far from professional, that is more than compensated for by portability and ease of use. This scanner is light and very simple in its operation. We primarily use it when visiting family to scan old photographs from family albums. This item makes this a much less painful process, in that we dont need to take albums back home with us, and it is *much* faster than individually scanning them with a flatbed scanner. Its quick, scanning a photo in a few seconds, and fairly quiet. Ive found with standard prints that arent bent, just sending it through without using the plastic sleeve turns out slightly better results. For bent prints or Polaroids, the sleeve was required. So far Ive run about a hundred pictures through it, and it still is performing reliably. The downside of this convenience is that your image quality certainly will not match that of a decent flatbed scanner, but this is to be expected. Scans are not high resolution, and on occasion, you see some mild distortion due the the motion of the picture being fed through. This was most evident in pictures with large white backgrounds, but I suspect this could be fixed in a photo editor later on. Youre not going to want to make 8X10s out of the results, but the scans look like they would make acceptable copies of equal size. If you use this for its intended purpose -- quick, rapid scanning of photos, business cards, and other small items, and dont expect it to perform as well as a stand-alone flat bed, you should be pleased. If image quality and scan DPI are your primary concern, or if you plan on framing or enlarging the results, you may want to stick with a standard flatbed.

I bought this little scanner in November and I absolutely love it and have recommended it to several friends. If you have photographs scattered around or hiding in a box somewhere in the attic or basement or garage this little gadget will digitize them for computer viewing in seconds! I have not used the included scanning sheath, I just slide the photos directly through for instant copy to a digital memory card. I havent had any trouble with the photo being damaged in any way. If an edge is curled, the feeder just wont accept it so it wont damage it. You can turn the photo in any direction to scan and then when it is converted , you can use the rotation tool in your photo software to turn in right side up. The photos on the card can either be moved to your computer to reuse the card , or you can just copy them to computer and leave on card as a backup. The only issue I found is that when you change the card or reuse it, the scanner starts naming the photos from 001 again, making them appear duplicated on your computer unless you name each photo that is in a folder on your computer. I had to name the folder I copied them too as Scanned 1, Scanned 2 etc until I rename the generic numbers to subject names. Other than that I have no complaints, its is about 7 inches long and 2 inches wide and 2 inches high, making it totally portable. It is limited to photos no larger than will physically fit in the slot but larger ones can be done on a flatbed scanner. This just makes quick work, feed them through and done. I did a pile of photos in minutes! Very pleased!

I really wanted this little scanner to work, but the fact is it does not have very good photo output in color, clarity, or resolution. I tested it against a $90 canon multifuction (MX860) with the same output settings of 300dpi. Granted the Canon is not as easy to scan photos, but I was more concerned about comparing quality of the scan. The results with the Pandigital were disappointing: fuzzy detail, oversaturated colors and poor resolution. I wasnt expecting miracles from this device, but the result was not worth the effort of scanning thousands of 4x6 photos from the past. The other major issue, which is a pain and also degrades the final product, is you are required to put the photo you are scanning into a plastic sleeve with a bar code on the end that tells the scanner it is a photo being scanned. This slows the roller down so it can increase the detail of the scan. The problem I had with the sleeve is a fine white lines on every photo scanned. Overall, its a great idea with poor execution. If they can fix the resolution issues, it would be a great little gadget.

The scanner never worked properly. Scans were only of part of the picture. I emailed Pandigital, and they told me to try a few things to see if it could be cured. When that didnt work, I emailed them for a replacement; they asked me to call. I called numerous times over a two month period, but after holding for 45 minutes to an hour, I gave up. When I finally reached them (after holding for 30 minutes), I was told they would send me a replacement unit. I waited several weeks, and called again (again waiting 30 minutes or so). I was told it was in process. After calling repeatedly in the next several weeks to ascertain status and speaking to 5 agents with the same story, I requested to speak to a supervisor. I was told that a supervisor wasnt available, but that my name would go on a list and someone would call me. After two more weeks, I finally got a call advising me that the reason I hadnt received a replacement was because they hadnt received my defective unit back. Problem is, I never was told I had to do that, and had never received any return instructions. I requested a refund as this whole process had soured me on Pandigital in general, but that was refused because I had purchased the unit from a company other than Pandigital (and at this point, it was way beyond the return period). I finally received the return instructions, but the replacement unit will only have a 90 day warranty. Save your money, go elsewhere.

(This was originally written in November 2011 and posted to a Woot forum. Reposting it here. Originally bought the one on Amazon for $80.) I spent all of today using it on over 600 pictures from my grandmas old shoebox (Christmas gift for the family will be photo CDs of this). A few things: 1) Most reviews on Amazon indicates it fails over time and starts putting white lines on your photos. Ive seen it on a few photos but at random and really maybe only one in 30 or so. Just rescan. 2)It was very fast at first...it has slowed down. It mysteriously gives me errors now that say there is a paper jam (there isnt) and I have to wait anywhere between 3-30 seconds between photos for this to clear. But that said...see next comment. 3) It comes with this seemingly ridiculous little sleeve that youre supposed to put the photos in. Most of the reviews on Amazon said you dont need it. Admittedly it is very nicely satisfying to slide your photos through without it. BUT DONT DO IT! I noticed now that all the people complaining of problems are the same people who said they didnt need the sleeve. Best as I can tell using it without the sleeve basically just gunks it up. Plus the sleeve has a calibration thingy on the front. At this point (see previous point) about the only way I can guarantee I wont get the paper jam error 80% of the time is to use the sleeve though I didnt for the first 300 or so photos. (With the sleeve it is maybe 10-15%) 4) It comes with little cheesy cleaning accessories. Im kind of grossed out though that my photos were getting that much dirt/ink in it that I can actually see the cleaning accessories turning grey (see again on why you should use the sleeve). 5) I am concerned that there are no replacement cleaning accessories and more importantly NO replacement sleeves. So I guess dont wreck these. The sleeve bothers me the most because mine quickly gets grubby with fingerprints (you can clean it, but still) and has enough static cling that I keep having to pull hairs out to keep them from scanning too. I am scared of what happens if I scratch it. Also if the sleeve gets grubby this might further gunk up the machine. 6) The literature indicates the sleeve is to protect your photos. Of all the photos I scanned without it, not a single one got damaged. 7) The quality of the photos is actually really nice. The color and detail are at least as good as the photos themselves even on the old and fading ones (seriously some of these are from the 1930s) 8) You cant scan polaroids (too thick) or newspaper clippings (too thin/delicate). [edit: I actually just realized...you could scan in newspaper photos IF you used the sleeve :p] 9) Even with the problems that are currently occurring its still much faster than my HP flatbed scanner for this task because you cant usually scan in photos anyway without putting them in one by one and then you have to crop them. 10) I dont know what algorithm it uses to crop, but it does a great job! It even manages with the decorative edge photos (like the ones from the 40s-50s). Very little extra black or cut off white parts. 11) It works on really little photos (1 x 1) all the way up to 4x6. Actually...you can do much longer photos as long as they fit since it will keep feeding them and scan the whole. 12) you have to wait until the motor finishes to feed in the next photos. Otherwise sometimes it creates an image with both of them. 12) The picture files are reasonable sized .jpgs that are very easy to find on the SD card and transfer to your computer. I havent used the USB part, but meh...I have a card reader so who cares? 13) Overall, I felt like I did enough research to find out that there really arent much better options out there (at least based on reviews it seems like all the problems this one has are echoed by similar problems or worse on other offerings by other companies unless you start looking at the professional ones in the $300-$600 range which did not suit my needs), and while I find the paper jam error as annoying as F*@#$, Im still glad I bought this (though sad I paid so much now that woot has it this cheap) because its still saving me SOOOO much time over using my flatbed and then having to crop down each image by hand. 14) I feel this is great if you want the ability to do it every now in then or have a project of about 400 or so photos. More than that and this may start having issues (I wonder if Id used the sleeve from the beginning if it would have been so bad?) But this is not something you can use if you have several thousand photos or want to start your own digital conversion business.

I have been putting off the task that I have been dreading - scanning my old photos from B.D. (before digital!). I have albums and boxes of pictures that I would like to have saved and backed up to an external hard drive. This my friends, provides a great solution! I can sit at the table and scan a box of photos (up to 4x6 size and down to about 1.5x 2.5 or the wallet size school pictures) while watching TV or listening to music. They scan right to an SD card and you can also plug into your laptop to make sure the image is saved the way you want. I love the portability of this - over Easter I took it over to my parents house and scanned my old photos from growing up. Luckily, Mom had taken all our pictures out of the albums and had them separated by kid. I was able to scan copies of brothers and my grade school/high school pictures and ones growing up. Hopefully my sis-in law will thank me for taking the time to do this for her, as I can just put them on a flash drive for her! I have plans to scrapbook my husbands (need to wrangle his baby pics from my mother-in-law)and my childhood pics, but I want a backup of the original pictures stored electronically. These pics are not a great resolution to begin with (the 70s photos were not high in megapixels!), but to have some sort of copy that I can catalog electronically is priceless to me, and I want to be able to pass these down to our kids and my brothers kids. The directions say to put the pictures into the plastic sleeve, but I have found they work fine without it. If I had a really tattered picture, I would probably do it. At that point I would probably opt to scan it on my main scanner so it is not passing through a scan, but rather sitting on top of a glass scanner. This product has saved me hours and hours of scannng one by one on my main scanner. By being able to pass though, I dont have to stop and reset each picture. I will have to go back and scan the ones larger than 5x7, but most of what we had in the albums were 4x6 or smaller. I am very happy I purchased this - especially on a gold box deal!!

I bought one of these Pandigital photo scanners afew weeks ago, against my better judgment. I had read many negative reviews not only here, but on other sites as well. Yet, I had seen some positive reviews and thought Id try it. Well, today I had time to try. Took everything out, followed the instructions 100% and scanned about ten photos. I stopped so I could check to see how it was doing. I hooked it up to my computer and noticed I had gotten the dreaded black stripe down the middle on every photo (this was using the sleeve). So, I tried a variation of other things - scanning different size photos, different positioning, different quality photos, and even two without the sleeve. I still got the black stripe down the middle. Okay, I turned it off and cleaned it per their instructions and then calibrated it. When I tried again, I got the same results! So, unless you dont mind wasting about $50, I recommend not taking a chance on this. Even the portion of the photos I could see appeared to be very poor quality. Oh well...lesson learned.

I bought the Pandigital one touch scanner so my wife and I could scan all of our pictures on to sd cards for safe keeping,we have about 60 photo albums. It works great, we can scan photos while watching TV. the only problem is the size of the sd card, it comes with a 512mb and holds about 1300 pictures. The problem is you CAN NOT use 2gb cards in the scanner and it does not tell you that in the instruction book, after we loaded several hundred pictures on the 2gb card and tried to check them it would not open. After I called and spoke to a tech at Pandigital about this, I was told you can only use the card it came with,a 1gb or 4gb but not the 2gb.(Whatever you load on a 2gb will be lost) Thanks to amazon.com I was able to find 1gb sd cards and we are just about finished with the transfer. Other than the sd card size issue,it is great!