Plustek OpticPro A320E - A3 CCD Sensor Flatbed Scanner, 12" x 17" scan Area with 7.8 Second Speed. Windows,Mac, ICA & Twain Compliant.

The first encounter with live chat was not helpful, nor was he pleasant. I could sense his lackadaisical attitude through his manner of text. I could literally picture him slouching over his laptop, with a dim light on. I disconnected the chat, and I am glad I did.2nd time around.David guided me through the process of everything, he was patient, and helpful. A definite breath of fresh air, because he was knowledgeable and willing to share that knowledge with me. He calibrated my scanner, rebooted my OCR option, created a zipper folder for me, he patiently answered all of my layman's questions, slowly and methodically. Just as I required- at my less than base tech level-STELLLLLLLLAAAAR customer service and product knowledge.he needs to train people-No, seriously. He was that good.I have had this scanner for two years, and because of David, I can use it now. I will definitely buy from Plustek again. Simply from this experience.

On a Mac, 15.5.2, the setup was easy. I didn't use the disks in the box but instead downloaded the software from their website.Getting the colors right was the biggest challenge with the setup. The default was way too red. I'm not sure exactly how I got the correct result, just kept adjusting the variables. It took more than ten minutes and less than an hour.The few things I couldn't figure out myself were quickly addressed with a call to their tech support line. These included moving the scanned files to a different location on my computer and getting images with black backgrounds to scan the black borders so that I got a fully scanned image.A few more thoughts: My old Epson was small, with a 8.5x11.7 bed. I knew this scanner would be much bigger but hadn't really conceptualized how much bigger the device would be! Fortunately, I have the space for it. Also, it is a bit noisy. Not a problem for me, but worth noting.

I returned it after testing it for a day or so. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. This is going to be a long story, but if you really want the lowdown on this scanner from a non-casual person, this is my story.Been needing a large format scanner for some time, but the cost is prohibitive. I'm not sure why, other than I guess low demand. I have an epson I paid $100 for that does spectacular scans at 8.5" x 11", but for double that area, epson wants three grand. I can't swing that, so I started looking at some of the... I guess you'd say "Brand X" options. Reviews are hard to go by, and there's not a lot of people independently reviewing these showing examples of their work (eg - youtube reviews). So, I took the plunge, hoping for the best.Plustek seemed like the "better" of the two brands I found on Amazon. According to their own marketing the CCD scanning element is better for artwork color accuracy and detail (which is what I'm after). SO there's this one at 500ish dollars, and the next one up at 1000. The difference being that this one tops out at 800dpi while the other does 1200, I believe. I only need 600dpi, this was already a splurge, so it seemed to make sense to get this one. Right? Why pay double for a feature I didn't need.SO you're like, enough of your life story, what happened? Okay I'll tell you. I got the scanner. Set up was a snap. For sure, the disk provided set up whatever drivers and software etc. needed with no issues. The software itself is pretty meh. It's designed so that you're basically setting up what the buttons do, and they expect you to push the buttons, rather than open up software and hit scan. That's okay I guess. Worth noting you can use VueScan if you're not pleased with their software interface or want to rely on pushing physical buttons. I experimented with both.MY big concern going in was, how does this handle color. I wanted to make sure that low contrast gradients, etc are not blown out. On that tip, I found it does okay. Color was not terrible. Not as good as my epson. It also does this thing where it assumes the white paper is the base white and makes it WHITE (my epson, you can actually see the paper... the grain, the texture, here you just get white). I think this results in the blow out of some almost white colors. I could not figure out how to over come this, either with the settings in their own software, or the advanced settings in vuescan. I was in the midst of wrestling mentally about whether or not I could live with this issue, when I made the startling discovery that lead to me to return the scanner.Essentially, I scanned the same thing on my epson, this plustek, and then also an ancient cheapo brother scanner that I also have, and i was comparing the color between all three to get a good idea of where this lands compared to the others. All settings the same, I scanned it at 600dpi. In doing so, I zoomed in really close to some line art I had colored. This is where I made a startling discovery. This scanner was not, in fact, scanning at the resolution it claimed to be scanning. Either that or it's profoundly terrible at scanning. Basically, when I zoomed into 100% instead of the crisp edged lines that my other scanners provided (including the cheapo brother scanner), the linework was blurry! If someone were to send the scan to me professionally and tell me it was a 600dpi scan, I would tell them they were lying and that they had scanned at a lower resolution and scaled up the resolution using photoshop of something similar. It is that blatant.Long story short, I do not believe that this scanner can actually scan at 600dpi (let alone the 800dpi it claims). It appears that it scans at a lower resolution, and uses software interpolation to up-res the final image. Again, I cannot prove that is what is happening, but that is certainly what it looks like (which is bad enough). In any case, that is completely unacceptable to have that appearance on a scan. I have no use for blurry scans. If you read the reviews, I am not the only person to report this. Thankfully Amazon honored my return, as this was quite a risky splurge on my part.Now I'm at an impasse - do I go for the more expensive Plustek? Try another brand? Give up? I don't know, but I certainly cannot recommend this scanner to others.

This replaced a Plustek OpticPro A320L which broke down within a few weeks of use. The two are apparently identical except that this A320E uses a Toshiba 800 dpi imaging element in place of the A320L's Sony 1600 dpi element. I don't need more than 600 dpi and the Toshiba element appears to deliver high quality scans so for the difference in price the A320E is very attractive for me.The scanner has a row of "One-touch scan" buttons on its right edge which in principle are a very nice idea. But the DocAction/MacAction software that programs their functions is seriously inadequate, which makes them all but useless at least for my purposes. For instance, one common task for me is to scan successive pages into my ABBYY FineReader software for batch editing and OCR. But DocAction offers no way to do this; it insists on starting a new instance of FineReader for each new page. Another common task is scanning outsize art. But for that it is best to use VueScan, which needs to control the scanner itself. So the buttons are a good idea whose bad execution deprives them of value.I did have a little difficulty in installing the scanner under Windows 10. I was able to resolve the problem straightforwardly with the aid of Plustek's excellent online chat help.To illustrate the scanner's capabilities I attach two scans. One is a standard color and grayscale target. Here it can be seen that the scan quality if very good, if not quite outstanding. The other is of a very difficult object, a 14kt gold watch, wrapped around a towel roll. Scan bar motion is right to left and resolution is 400 dpi. Note that only the watch's crystal is actually in contact with the scanner glass.Aside from the disappointment of the one-touch scanning buttons and a little residual worry regarding reliability (based on my sad experience with the A320L, whose mechanism is very similar) I am satisfied that this scanner will meet my needs well, at a relatively modest price.