With the HP FilmScan 5-Inch Touch Screen Film Scanner, it's easy to sum up the sales pitch: It's an inexpensive film scanner that can handle slides or filmstrips in several popular film formats. Its 5-inch color touch screen makes it easy to evaluate and edit the images before saving them to an SD card, and a Gallery mode lets the FilmScan 5-Inch act as a digital picture frame for automated slideshows. Unfortunately, the machine doesn’t handle portrait-mode shots very well. And while the scanned images are generally of average quality for this category, they aren’t as sharp as they could be. It's a very serviceable budget film scanner, but if image quality is paramount, the venerable, flatbed-style Epson Perfection V800 Photo is our top pick for a variety of film formats (or the Plustek OpticFilm 135i Ai, if all you care about is scanning 35mm media).

Design: Portable and Efficient

At 3.5 by 5.7 by 4.7 inches (HWD), the FilmScan 5-Inch is small enough to place on a desk or table. It's extremely small, in fact: Just compare it to the similarly priced and equipped ClearClick QuickConvert 2.0, which looks positively mammoth at 7.8 by 12.1 by 9.3 inches. Likewise, the FilmScan 5-Inch weighs just 13.4 ounces (less than a pound), compared with the 4 pounds of the QuickConvert 2.0.

(Credit: David English)

Being small and lightweight is essential for portability. However, for this kind of hybrid product, you also want the screen to be as large as possible, so you can properly evaluate the quality of your slides or filmstrips. That brings us to the next plus for the FilmScan 5-inch: Despite its tiny size, the scanner sports a 5-inch color touch screen, compared with the 2.4-inch color LCD (which is not a touch screen) on the QuickConvert 2.0. That larger screen is especially beneficial because you can also use the FilmScan 5-Inch as a digital photo gallery for your scanned images.

But the FilmScan 5-Inch can't top the QuickConvert 2.0 in another area: Unlike the latter, the FilmScan 5-Inch doesn't offer an internal battery. Instead, it draws power through an included USB-C-to-USB-A cable, which you can use with a desktop, a laptop, or a spare charger. (You'll need one rated for at least 5 volts.) I used an AC power surge protector with an available charging port.

(Credit: David English)

Returning to similarities, the FilmScan 5-Inch, like the QuickConvert 2.0, features a built-in SD-card reader that enables you to save your scanned images to a card. According to HP, the FilmScan 5-Inch only accepts SD and SDHC cards with a capacity of up to 128GB, and the company cautions that “SDXC cards may not be compatible” with the scanner. I tried a variety of spare cards, including a 6GB microSD card inside an SD adapter, and everything worked fine—including a 256GB SDXC card. Still, it might be best to stay within HP’s recommendations. That SDXC card might work well initially, but create problems later on. (Note that HP doesn't include an SD card in the box.)

(Credit: David English)

The FilmScan 5-Inch can handle a fairly wide range of film media. It’s compatible with the 135 (35mm), 126, and 110 formats for slides and filmstrips, negative or positive, in color or black-and-white. The scanner can accommodate this range of formats by including a slide holder and three film adapters. When you need to scan a 135, 126, or 110 slide, you’ll use the 50x50 slide holder by itself. When you need to scan a 135, 126, or 110 filmstrip, you’ll add in one of the 135, 126, or 110 film adapters.

The QuickConvert 2.0 utilizes a similar system, featuring separate holders for 35mm negatives, 35mm slides, 126 negatives, and 110 negatives. QuickConvert 2.0 takes it one step further, though, by allowing you to scan 4-by-6-inch photos through its removable base section. That’s a very useful feature to have, and it isn’t available with the FilmScan 5-Inch.

Using the HP FilmScan 5-Inch: Easy to Use, But Options Are Limited

Right off the bat, the FilmScan 5-Inch posed a bit of a riddle. After connecting the scanner to a power source, I inserted a compatible SD card, but the machine wouldn't accept it—until I flipped the card over. Unlike most other SD-card readers, the slot on the FilmScan 5-Inch slot wants you to insert the card upside-down (contacts side facing up, label side facing down).

Press the power button, and you’ll soon see a homepage on the touch screen, offering four options. The Capture option enables you to make any necessary adjustments before scanning your slide or filmstrip. With Gallery, you can play back those scans on the touch screen, while USB Upload lets you transfer scanned images from your SD card to a connected computer via a USB cable. A final option, Settings, allows you to change some of the, well, settings that you previously put in place.

Next, load your slide or filmstrip, using the method I described above. When using an adapter, ensure that the four small pins are aligned with the corresponding holes on the slide holder.

Once the adapter is in place, you can close the holder until it clicks shut. If that doesn’t work, you may have to reopen the holder and reposition the adapter.

(Credit: David English)

Before you initiate a scan, use the touch screen to select the film type, film size, and image resolution. With the latter, you can choose either 13 megapixels or 22 megapixels. The FilmScan 5-Inch has a 13-megapixel color CMOS sensor, so that 22-megapixel setting is an interpolated higher resolution. I found it to be only marginally better than the 13-megapixel setting, and, as you would expect, the 22-megapixel images will take up considerably more space on your drive.

From there on, the process is essentially the same for all the formats. Insert the slide holder (either by itself or with an adapter) into the right side of the unit. Arrow marks on both the FilmScan 5-Inch and the holder make orientation easy. Then you put a slide or filmstrip into the right side of the holder. With a multi-image filmstrip, you keep pushing the filmstrip through until you’re done. You insert slides one at a time, with each new slide pushing the previous ones through.

As you feed the slides or filmstrip through the scanning mechanism, you can use the touch screen’s Preview mode to help center the image that you want to scan, then use the onscreen controls to adjust the image’s color, contrast, or brightness. You can also crop the image, if needed. When you’re ready, press the large scan button on the top of the unit to save the image to the SD card.

(Credit: David English)

Once you’ve saved some scanned images to the SD card, you can try out the Gallery mode. You can either use the on-screen left and right arrows to scroll through the saved images, or you can press the Slideshow icon to start a stream of your scans, where each image stays on-screen for five seconds, then automatically moves on to the next. Once it reaches the last image, the slideshow loops back to begin the sequence again. Unfortunately, there’s no way to change the display time, though five seconds seems about right given the size of the screen.

The Gallery mode is a nice feature to have, as the 5-inch color touch screen works quite well as a little digital picture frame. That said, there really should be an adjustment in the settings to vary the display time each image stays on the screen. A random-order option would also be useful when you’ve accumulated a large number of scanned images.

One big snag for the FilmScan 5-Inch: It doesn't support portrait-mode shots, as opposed to landscape. If you insert a slide that’s correctly oriented for a portrait, the top and bottom of the image will get cut off. You can use the on-screen crop tool to select your preferred portion of that image, but you can’t alter the system to accommodate a portrait shot. After all, the screen itself is in landscape mode.

You can work around this particular problem by inserting your portrait shot as though it were in landscape format. The image will show up sideways, but you can rotate it later on your computer. Unfortunately, there’s no simple portrait-mode workaround for the Gallery feature. The tilted images you saved to the SD card will also appear tilted sideways in your Gallery slideshows.

How about manually rotating your portrait-mode scans using your computer, then writing them back to the SD card for a more consistent slideshow? I tried that, and the results were somewhat disappointing. The Gallery mode did show everything with its proper orientation, but the portrait images were noticeably thinner and shorter than those in landscape mode.

Scan Speed and Quality: Relatively Fast, But With Mixed Results

As with books and covers, you can’t always judge a scanner by its scan time. Once you press the scan button, the FilmScan 5-Inch takes approximately 2.2 seconds to save the scans to the SD card, about the same time as the QuickConvert 2.0. What really matters, though, is the time that gets eaten up between scans. Remember, you're dealing with a device that can handle only one slide or filmstrip at a time, so you want to be able to swap one item for another as quickly as possible.

The good news is that you can scan a bunch of slides or filmstrips relatively quickly with the FilmScan 5-Inch, as you don’t have to remove the holder each time you finish a scan. (You simply push the media through.) On the downside, the slide or filmstrip is only loosely secured as you're pushing it through, compared with other types of scan mechanisms. And given the very small dimensions involved, it doesn’t take much of a misstep to throw off the focus.

As for image quality, the FilmScan 5-Inch delivers about average results for this low-cost category. It didn't produce especially sharp or detailed images, and the colors didn’t always match the tones or hues of the original source material. For many potential buyers, this will be an acceptable trade-off, given the product's price and the potential rewards. After all, those old slides or filmstrips of Grandma might never be viewed, otherwise, without some kind of analog-to-digital conversion. Better to have a so-so digital image than nothing at all.

If you do want sharper and more accurate results, you might consider a higher-priced film scanner, such as the Plustek OpticFilm 135i Ai, which has a 7,200dpi optical resolution, compared with 2,889dpi for the FilmScan 5-Inch. That's like watching a movie on a Blu-ray disc versus a VHS tape. In addition, the OpticFilm 135i Ai can scan four 35mm slides or a six-image 35mm filmstrip at one time, and you can do a remarkable amount of customizing to its editing features. The OpticFilm can also handle portrait shots just as easily as landscapes. On the downside, it’s limited to 35mm slides or filmstrips.

If you’re looking for a more versatile scanner, and you’re willing to boost your budget considerably, you might consider the Epson Perfection V800 Photo, our Editors' Choice for a top-quality film scanner. The V800 can accommodate both positive and negative film (including slides), in sizes ranging from 35mm to as large as 8 by 10 inches. And it can scan as many as 12 slides or three six-frame filmstrips at a time.