Best Photo Scanner in 2022
While the widespread adoption of digital photography, accelerated by ever better smartphone cameras, has transformed the way we take and save photos, most homes house a trove of physical pictures from yesteryear. As time wears on, these photos, often forgotten in a crumbling shoe box hidden away in dusty attics, eventually wither away without proper conservation. Colors fade, edges fray, and left long enough, photos will naturally decompose. Photo scanners play a vital role by digitizing original prints to preserve them for the future.
The market is awash with countless options, with manufacturers flaunting their product’s ability to capture sharp and worthy digital versions of your photos. But, amid all these options and unhelpfully similar promises, which is the best photo scanner? Today, we’ll be answering that exact question and offering a selection of what we consider the best scanners out there, with a focus on those best equipped to digitize your physical photo collection.
Products at a Glance
Best Photo Scanner in 2022
- Fast for a flatbed scanner
- 4800 dpi
- Easy of use
- Pricier than the nearly identical Canon CanoScan Lide 300
- Fast
- Neat and stylish design
- Great price
- Treats photo gently
- Not the best scan quality out there
- Excellent quality scans
- 4,800 dpi
- Compact size for flatbed scanner
- Slow scan speed
- Compact footprint
- Rechargeable battery
- No computer required
- Not suited to very high resolution scans
- Scan time is longer than other options
- Extremely affordable
- Good quality scans
- Scan speeds
Our Verdict
Our pick for the best photo scanner goes to the Canon CanoScan Lide 400. It’s high resolution within the entry-level range makes it a no brainer for those that want faithful scans of physical photos, and the quality of the results was hands down among the best out there. For speed, we gravitated towards the excellent Plustek Ephoto Z300. Compact, stylish, and efficient, this scanner should suit those with stacks of photos to digitize on a budget.
Although the Canon CanoScan Lide 400 produces excellent scans, we were also taken by the Epson Perfection V39. Despite being among the slowest on our list, it offers an awful lot of functionality for a reasonable price. As for portability, you can’t go wrong with the Doxie Go SE, which was by far the most useful scanner we came across, if only how easy it is to scan photos on the go without the need for a computer.
Finally, for those trying to stretch their budget to the maximum, the Canon CanoScan Lide 300 offers an outstanding balance of design, quality prints, and a respectable resolution, despite it being lower than its pricier older brother, the Canon CanoScan Lide 400.
Our guide to the best photo scanners now comes to an end. We hope that the above has helped ease the sometimes frustrating experience of choosing the right product from a sea of options. If you have any questions, please do drop us a line in the comments section below, and we’ll endeavor to provide an answer as quickly as possible.