The LiDE 35 uses an LED light source instead, coupled with a CIS (Contact Image Sensor) scanning element, which means it’s very slim and lightweight and requires no warm-up time to bring the scanning lamp up to temperature. It also needs no power supply, taking all the power it needs directly from the host PC’s USB port.

Traditionally, the down side with LED scanners is that they fail to provide the tonal range or colour saturation offered by CCF models, making them second best for anyone who’s serious about photo image quality.

We’ve been impressed by Canon’s LiDE scanners in the past and the new LiDE 35 certainly looks the part. With a two-tone charcoal and black finish and a neat row of four, one-touch scanning buttons along the front panel, it’s a nicely finished piece of kit. But is its beauty more than skin deep?

Slip an A4 page into the LiDE 35 and expect a preview scan in about 11 seconds. This is twice the time returned by most modern CCF scanners but, then again, there’s no lamp warm-up time so the baby Canon often turns out quicker overall. For actual scanning, our 6x4.5in test photo took 15 seconds to scan at 300dpi and an A4 mono text page took even less at 14 seconds. Again, this is only slightly slower than most new CCF flatbeds costing up to three times the price.

The real surprise comes in the shape of image quality. In our photo and calibration card test scans, tonal separation was extremely good, although the default contrast setting was slightly high, nudging dark colours into black. Colour rendition and saturation were excellent and, coupled with superb sharpness (even without using the scanner driver’s Unsharp Mask facility), the overall image quality was actually better than with many CCF scanners on the market.

Further niceties include Canon’s convenient ‘Z-lid’ design for scanning books and magazines easily, while the software driver includes features for removing dust and small scratches automatically, speeding up post-scan tidying. Other software in the box includes ArcSoft PhotoStudio for image editing and ScanSoft OmniPage for OCR. All in all, the LiDE35 offers superb quality and excellent value, as well as unbeatable convenience for both desktop and laptop PCs.
Matthew Richards