The Epson Perfection V39 ($99.99) is basically a throwback to the kind of flatbed scanner that used to be standard. Most flatbeds today can scan film, a design choice that's largely a response to the popularity of MFPs, which rarely include film-scan capability. The V39 ($99.99 at Epson) leaves out the ability to scan film, so you don't have to pay for the feature if you don't need it, and focuses instead on giving you higher-quality scans for photographic prints than most MFPs can manage. More important, it delivers enough to make it our new Editors' Choice for a budget home scanner for high-quality photo scanning.

There are only a few general-purpose flatbeds today that share the V39's lack of a film-scanning feature, including the Canon CanoScan LiDE 120 Color Image Scanner ($199.00 at Amazon) , which is our preferred pick for a budget home scanner for snapshot-quality photo scans; the Canon CanoScan LiDE220 Color Image Scanner ($111.00 at Amazon) , which the V39 replaces as our Editors' Choice; and the Epson Perfection V19 ($69.99 at Amazon) . All of these are highly capable alternatives, but not quite a match for the V39.

The Canon 120 offers 2,400 pixel-per-inch (ppi) optical resolution, which is far higher than you need for scanning photos to view on screen or print at their original size. However, the other three models offer 4,800ppi, which lets you crop in on a much smaller section of a photo, enlarge it, and retain more fine detail than you can with a lower resolution.

The V39, Epson V19, and Canon 220 all offer high-quality photo scans, but differ in other capabilities. The Epson V19, for example, lacks software that will let you scan and save to an editable text file, a feature that most people need at least occasionally. The Canon 220 and V39 are more directly comparable, and can both scan to editable text format. However the V39 did a little better on text recognition in our tests, which is just enough to give it the edge.

Setup and Software

The V39 measures 1.5 by 9.9 by 14.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 3 pounds 6 ounces. Setting it up is standard fare. It gets both power and data over a single, supplied USB cable. All you have to do is plug in the cable and install the software. You also have the choice of either putting the scanner flat on your desk or using its integrated kickstand to position it in a not-quite-vertical angle to your desktop. I prefer the flat-on-desk position, because using the kickstand makes it harder to position the photo or document on the flatbed. You might find using the kickstand preferable, however, as it takes up less space.

As with the Epson V19 and a growing number of other low-cost scanners, the V39 comes with essentially no applications, so you have to rely on websites like Evernote and assorted free downloads like Picasa for tasks like managing documents, organizing and editing photos, and otherwise working with your scanned files. Unlike the Epson V19, however, the V39 comes with a scan utility that includes an option to scan and save to Microsoft Word format, which at least gives you an optical-character recognition (OCR) capability.

The supplied software includes four separate scan utilities (Epson Scan, Scan to PDF, Document Capture Pro, and ArcSoft Scan-n-Stitch Deluxe), a Copy utility, Twain and WIA drivers, which let you scan directly from almost any Windows program with a scan command, and Easy Photo Scan, which not only scans, but lets you send your scans to a choice of destinations.

The Epson Scan utility calls up the Twain driver so you can use it directly. The Scan to PDF utility scans to your choice of an image PDF or searchable PDF (sPDF) file. It also lets you scan additional pages to the same file by choosing the Scan button in the utility for each one, and end by choosing the utility's Finish button to save the file to disk.

Document Capture Pro is the kind of utility that you're more likely to get with a document scanner. It lets you scan to an assortment of image and text formats, including Word files, and it also offers sophisticated features, like letting you create scan profiles. With Scan-n-Stitch, you can take multiple scans of pages that are too big for the letter-size flatbed, and then digitally stitch them together into a single image. The program lets you pick any of several paper sizes from legal to poster size, which needs 10 separate scans, in two rows of five scans each, and then walks you through each step.

Similar Products

Our Current Picks for How to Buy a Scanner

Easy Photo Scan lets you scan a photo, see the result on screen, do some basic editing, like cropping and rotating the image, and then send the file to a folder on disk, send it by email, or upload it to one of several websites, including Picasa, Facebook, Evernote, and SugarSync.

Scanning and Scan Quality

Scanning is easy. Simply launch the utility you want to use, change settings if you like, and give the scan command. As is typical for scanners today, the Epson scan driver offers several modes, ranging from fully automatic, which is equivalent to a point-and-shoot mode in a camera, to Advanced mode, which gives you lots of control, but can be overwhelming if you're not well versed in scanning options.

See How We Test Scanners

The fully automatic mode handles most scans well enough that it may be all you'll ever need. However, some features require manual settings. The Color Restore option, for example, does an impressive job of improving the color of faded photos, but you have to use one of the non-automated modes to get at the setting.

Photo-scan quality is near excellent. I saw a slight color shift in my tests, but memory colors—like green grass and blue sky—and flesh tones were well within an acceptable range. The scanner also did an excellent job retaining detail based on shading over the entire range from the black-on-black shades of a tuxedo to the white-on-white patterns in a bridal gown in the same test photo.

Document Scanning

No scanner that lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) is really meant for office tasks. Within that context, however, the V39 does surprisingly well. In particular, its ability to scan to sPDF format makes it useful for extremely light-duty document-management applications where you need the ability to search the full text within a group PDF files to find the file you're looking for.

Similarly, the V39's ability to scan to Word format can come in handy for occasional, light-duty text recognition. It's certainly an improvement over having to retype a document from scratch. The V39 handled our OCR test nicely, recognizing both our Times New Roman and Arial test pages at sizes as small as 6 points without a mistake.

Conclusion
If you're looking for a scanner primarily for photographic prints, any one of these four scanners—the Canon 120, the Canon 220, the Epson V19, or the Epson Perfection V39—is worth considering, with the Canon 120's low price making it the obvious choice if its 2,400ppi resolution is all you need. If you need 4,800ppi for photos, however, and also want a general-purpose scanner for occasionally scanning a short document, the V39's PDF Scan utility plus its capable text recognition put it in front of the pack to make it our Editors' Choice.

Best Scanner Picks

• The Best Photo Scanners for 2020
• The Best Scanners for 2020
• The Best Scanners for Macs
• Top Tips for Preserving Your Photos
• More Scanner Reviews
• More from Canon

Further Reading

• How We Test Scanners
• Top Tips for Preserving Your Photos
• Epson FastFoto Scans a Photo Per Second
• Microsoft App Turns Your Phone Into a 3D Scanner
• Get Organized: Choose the Right Scanner for Going Paperless