HP Scanjet 5550c (Product Review)
By Richard Jantz / PC World, 03/26/03
WHAT'S HOT: The HP Scanjet 5550c is made to order for small-office users
who want to scan multiple-page documents. We don't see many small-office
scanners that offer even an optional automatic document feeder, but the
5550c comes with one that can handle up to 35 pages at a time. Assembling
and installing the ADF is fairly straightforward--it's ready for work in
only a few minutes. When we tried out the ADF, it took about 4.5 minutes
total to scan a 15-page text document and to use optical character
recognition to turn the scan into editable text. (We used the Iris OCR
engine that's built into HP's Photo and Imaging software.) Of course, you
can also scan photos by placing them on the glass manually.
Tested using its USB 2.0 interface (also compatible with USB 1.1 ports),
the 5550c earned very good scores for its performance overall, ranking
third among small-office scanners behind the HP Scanjet 5500c and the Epson
Perfection 1660 Photo. It scanned a full-page black-and-white document at
300 dpi in 19 seconds; the Scanjet 5500c (17 seconds) and the Perfection
1660 (14 seconds) outpaced it, but it came in ahead of all other competing
models (which took from 21 to 43 seconds to complete the same test) on our
small-office chart.
WHAT'S NOT: Though the main reason to choose the 5550c is to get its
multipage document scanning--which it does relatively well--our judges were
much less impressed with the quality of its photograph scans. In our print
and on-screen color tests, the 5550c produced images that looked sharp and
bright overall, but some colors appeared oversaturated; our photo subject's
skin tones looked much redder than in the original, for example. And the
5550c's monochrome scans seemed to drop more details (in darker areas, for
instance) than scans from competing models did. However, we found that we
could improve the color accuracy and detail by making various manual
adjustments with the scanner software.
WHAT ELSE: Like its cousin the HP Scanjet 5500c, the 5550c has ten shortcut
buttons on its front panel. In addition to the common quick-start buttons
(for scanning, attaching images to e-mail, or sending them to a
photo-sharing Web site), the 5550c also provides photocopier-like controls
for scanning a document directly to your printer; you can choose color or
black-and-white printing and specify the number of copies (via a
two-character LCD). An optional (US$79 extra) transparency adapter is
available, as well.
Bundled software includes ScanSoft PaperPort LE 7, a document manager that
does a fine job of helping you keep track of all your scans; and HP Photo
and Imaging software, a suite of applications that contains image editing,
photo gallery, and photo printing functions. The image editing tools are
limited to basics such as cropping and rotating images, and they lack
advanced features (like the collage tools and special-effects filters found
in most dedicated image editors). HP Scanning, the TWAIN driver, provides a
streamlined basic interface for beginners and casual users, as well as easy
access to advanced features like color and tonal controls. A bonus
application, Hemera Greeting Card Creator, offers easy-to-use templates for
making cards with scanned images.
UPSHOT: With its zippy automatic document feeder, the HP Scanjet 5550c is
well suited for steady OCR work, but getting the best image quality from
photos requires some tweaking.
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