Plustek OS1180 Flatbed Scanner for A3 Graphics and Documents - Designed for Libraries, Schools or Small Offices - Scan A3 Document in 9 Seconds About

Someone asked if this scanner was good for scanning LP covers. I replied, as did others, that it isn't quite big enough for a an LP cover - just a few millimetres too short. I scanned one cover twice showing the difference from either side at 300dpi. You can stitch the images together easily using an app (I use Photostitcher) and it was my intention to also show the stitched image but for some reason Amazon won't let me upload it. I've had this scanner a few months now and think it's good value for money. I've been using it to scan black and white comic artwork and old comics.

One happy uni student. It arrived earlier than expected which was wonderful. After reading reviews saying we might need tech support on installing, we didn’t. Works well and easy to use. Useful advice if you are using a thinner grade paper which you use for technical drawing, you might want to add an extra sheet of thicker paper or card so the block out the black cover when scanning, it just gives a clearer image and saves time on editing.

The A3 scanner works fine, installation can be iffy (Windows 10) but worked after a couple of attempts, so don't give up if the first time it stalls (unplug it and replug it in and retry). The scanner itself does a good job, note that its a document scanner so isn't going to be super high res for photos or pictures, but will be good enough for most things. It is quite large in the box to prevent it getting damaged in transit, so be prepared for a large box. For the price its a good deal and product and does the job just fine.

Every single picture I have scanned has banding running down the entire image. If you want a scanner for commercial and artistic purposes, this is not the one. It's only been trouble and made things much harder for me.

Great product, I read lots of reviews prior to buying and am not disappointed. Easy to install, it is large, but not too heavy. I have to apply a little pressure on the lid with watercolour images, if the paper is a little buckled, but overall very impressed.

Easy to install & use. Great results straight away. I would highly recommend..

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.

This is a really excellent product for both mono and colour photos also documents. It was easy to install and I contacted the serviced department of this company as there was a problem with the power adapter, it was resolved at once and very nice people to deal with. This is excellent value for money, will use company again, also delivered next day .

I absolutely love this scanner. I have been working to diminish my stuffed file drawers by throwing away what I don't need and scanning what I want to keep. Some of the keepers were newspaper clippings and other larger items that my other scanner couldn't accommodate--other than scanning them in pieces. Thus began my search for a large-format scanner. Is this the best large-format scanner on the market? That depends on your criteria and how much you're willing to spend. Here's why it is the best for me. 1) If you compare the prices of large-format scanners, this is an unbelievable bargain. If you're trying to scan fine art, it may not be what you need. For my purposes of having high-def, clear copies of precious but mundane items, it was a screamin' deal. 2) This has a great user interface and is fairly intuitive and easy to use. It took me a little while (maybe 20-30 minutes) to figure out exactly how everything worked, which I consider not bad at all. It also has excellent instructions. 3) It offers a lot of fine tuning, with options of color/BW, level of definition/dpi, JPG/PDF, etc. 4) I initially couldn't get it to work and was ready to send it back. I called tech support, and I got a human. Not a human after a recorded menu. A real human answered the phone. The kind and knowledgeable tech support rep who answered the phone walked me through troubleshooting, and I discovered a huge, embarrassing, total rookie error. I hadn't fully plugged in the USB cable. The rep was totally kind about it. 5) Most importantly, this scanner creates clear, high-quality scans. Yay! Mission accomplished. (If you found this review helpful, I'd really appreciate if you would click the "Helpful" button. Thanks so much for reading! Liz)

El producto bien, 2 estrellas por utilizar correos express para el envío, posiblemente la peor empresa de reparto de toda España

I am totally happy with this product, it can truely scan very high quality images. There are various settings available to fine tune the image as you wish and you can save presets based on your preferences.

Le choix de se scanner à plat au format A3 correspond tout a fait à mes activités. La prise en main m'a parue facile, il faut bien sûr faire quelques essais pour optimiser les résultats.

The scanner is easy to setup, fast and produces very crisp and clear images. It takes a bit of practice to sometimes find the right settings for your source material. It seems to struggle with certain colour palettes, especially darker sections of an image. In one test case, my cheap Epson scanner on top of the printer produced a more pleasant result than this more premium model. Normally, I don't like to use any filters or enchancements from the scanner software and prefer to do everything manually in an editing program. However, I found without using "auto density" feature the scan would produce a very washed out scan. Overall, this is a good budget scanner but it's probably not for me. I am in the process of returning this and have bought the big brother model, the A320E - which is a CCD type scanner (this is CIS) and should produce richer colour palettes than OS1180.