UMAX Astra 5650

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UMAX Astra 5650

R. Mohan, Mar 08, 2004 0000 hrs IST

The Astra 5650 is their answer to the competition in the hi-speed USB 2.0 scanner division.

Fast scans, Good color reproduction

Blurry and red spots at 2400 dpi

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Scanners for the SOHO segment have come a long way, from the 600 dpi (dots per inch) mode to the present resolution of 2400 dpi. With HP, Canon and Epson already having a USB 2.0 scanner in their line-up, UMAX, a prime player in the Indian scanners arena, is not far behind. The Astra 5650 is their answer to the competition in the hi-speed USB 2.0 scanner division.

Compact Package
The UMAX Astra 5650, measuring 253 x 420 x 98 mm and weighing 1.7 kg, scans at an optical resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi at 48-bit color depth, with the maximum scan resolution going up to 19200 x 19200 dpi, which is more than enough to enlarge an image to almost poster size. It has five buttons, which includes the scan button, a direct scan-to-email button and a direct scan-to-printer button. The scanner's optical CCD sensor only improves the overall image reproduction. A battery adapter is also provided.

The software package includes the Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0, the Ulead PhotoExpress 4.0 to import, edit and organize digital images and the ABBYY Fine Reader (optical character recognition) software, which helps in precise scanning and editing the printed text directly.

Installation and Test procedure
The installation of the scanner went off smoothly without much hassle in Windows XP. It was detected as soon as it was connected and the drivers for the same were automatically installed. Those using other Windows OS would have to install the drivers to get it started. The test procedure involved scanning the printouts given by the latest Inkjet printers we tested. (Unfortunately, we came to realize that not many printers gave us the precise results we expected). That's the beauty of a scanner; it captures minute details of images and text.

Before moving on to the testing of the scanner, what struck me was the extra feature of 'hardware-security lock' provided at the bottom. Although a good feature, it answered my question as to why the 'Preview' option never worked for the first half-hour.

Text Results: We first put the scanner to the text-scan test, which had a mixture of various fonts printed at the largest and smallest font size on an A4 sized page. The scanner took approximately 8 seconds to warm-up and 20 seconds to transfer data at a resolution of 300 dpi, which is more than ideal for data containing only text. The black color reproduction was very prominent. Text printed at the smallest font was so jumbled that it gave enough evidence to prove that none of the printers we had tested before gave the perfect accuracy while printing text at the smallest font.

Color Results: Next up, we scanned the color results from our printer tests at a resolution of 1200 dpi. It took a mere 19 seconds to preview. Scanning at this resolution meant that one could expect a hell lot of time for the actual transfer of data. But this scanner took 9 minutes and 27 seconds to complete the transfer, which is pretty fast. However, the time may vary depending on whether you have a hi-speed USB 2.0 interface.

The color reproduction was also very clear. The depth and sharpness of the red and blue colors was very visible, but the green color did not meet standards, as it was quite dull, not good enough if you are planning to blow it up to poster size. The true shade of green scanned showed up only when we used the 'Auto-Color' feature in Adobe Photoshop. Scanning the color images at a resolution of 2400 dpi gave us a blurred output with a major presence of red spots. Ideally, I will not recommend scanning images at this resolution.

Even though the 35-mm film transparency adapter was provided, we could not test it out due to some technical issues on our side. So we won't be able to comment on the results. But the option is available.

Conclusion
This scanner has an MRP of Rs. 10,500, but can be easily found at a street price of Rs. 8,750. Considering that it has a USB 2.0 interface, which is backward compatible with the standard 1.1 version, an option to scan negatives, a very good scan speed and a good color reproduction at high resolution, this is a good bet. And given the fact, that scanners with similar specifications from HP and Epson are available at a much higher price tag, it certainly makes this a decent buy.

Test Unit Sourced From: Neoteric Infomatique Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai.