New Epson ff680w Scanner ... Don’t. But get the software for your FF640.

[Wayne Fox]

This evening a demo ff680w scanner arrived at my store, so I took it home to test it out against my ff640.  If you are thinking of buying this type of device, I strongly advise against buying it.  Buy the 640. There are two main reasons

1 Scan quality.  Sorry, but side by side the 640 does a better job, especially with images on luster type paper.  I’ve attached a file, zoom in to 100% and to me it’s pretty obvious.  This is at 300dpi, at 600 dpi the 680 is a little better, but still not as good as the 640. I’m totally puzzled by this, maybe a tradeoff for being slightly faster?  Not worth it.

2.  In what appears to be a total blunder, I cannot find anyway to scan a stack of snapshots in the order of the stack. On the 640, you stack the pictures face down into the scanner and it takes the bottom one first (which is the first print in the stack), and proceeds.  When its finished, you can continue to take prints off of a large stack, place them in the scanner, and continue scanning. When finished, the images are numbered in order from top to bottom of the stack.

   With the 680, you stack the prints into the scanner face forward.  Just like the 640, it takes the bottom print first and proceeds through the stack.  That means the bottom print is now numbered 0001, and the top print is whatever number of prints that were in the stack.  So the only way you can keep the sequence correct is to scan from the bottom of the stack forward.  Of course, this means the sequence is backwards of the stack, and so you have to figure out some way to reverse the filenames if you want them to make any sense.

One other big issue, one of the 680’s big features is wifi connectivity, but unless your router supports WPS, it’s a nightmare to get the scanner onto your network.  Many of the newer devices (Like Eero) do not support WPS.  I gave up trying to get it onto the network, and now after testing it glad I didn’t keep trying. 

It’s headed back to Epson tomorrow, I wouldn’t sell this device to a customer.

The good news is the new software works just fine on the 640 and is definitely an improvement.  Auto rotation detection works at least part of the time, and you can view the results in a browser like fashion right after scanning, correcting rotation without having to go to a secondary program.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Did you ask Epson about the quality issue; is it possible that the test unit you received is defective?

[Wayne Fox]

I do have a service request in to Epson, but it appears to me the issue is reflections based on the scanning head and illumination system, not sure if there is anything that can do to fix it.  Perhaps they’ll send me another unit to compare.

I still don’t recommend it based on the inability to scan a stack from the front to the back.  This is designed for someone who has hundreds/thousands of snapshots to scan, which is a daunting enough task without having to jump through hoops to figure out how to insure the files are sequentially numbered in the order they are in the stacks of photographs. I’ll ask them about that too, but since they 680 places the document scanner on the back and the photo scanner on the front (opposite of the 640) not sure what they could do.

[digitaldog]

Great info, thanks. As a new owner of the FF-640, all data points good to know, not disappointed that a newer unit came out less than a year after I purchased. I'll look for the new software.

[Doug Gray]

One other big issue, one of the 680’s big features is wifi connectivity, but unless your router supports WPS, it’s a nightmare to get the scanner onto your network.  Many of the newer devices (Like Eero) do not support WPS.  I gave up trying to get it onto the network, and now after testing it glad I didn’t keep trying

Wow! WPS is notoriously easy to crack in seconds by widely available code. Requiring a network to open a WPS connection with a newly introduced device that requires WPS for wireless isn't something I've seen in many years. Really bizarre. Who wants to leave their system open so they can run a scanner?

[Wayne Fox]

Wow! WPS is notoriously easy to crack in seconds by widely available code. Requiring a network to open a WPS connection with a newly introduced device that requires WPS for wireless isn't something I've seen in many years. Really bizarre. Who wants to leave their system open so they can run a scanner?

Agreed.  Just seems the design team has a disconnect with current standards and the main purpose of the scanner.

I couldn't find a way around it.  I’m assuming the scanner has a built in IP address, so I could use Epson NetConfig to set a manual address, but so far no luck.

[dafire]

Hi,

Joined this site specifically for this conversation and so I could see the image comparison in the starting thread.
Unfortunately, in the image the 680 looked better to me. The 640 images looked too contrasty.

Q1 - was the software updated for the 640 in the image examples?

This is what I am finding in the spec differences:

• Color Depth: 48-bit  [640] | 30-bit [680]
  Grayscale Depth: 16-bit (64k Gray levels)[640] | 10-bit gray [680]

Because of these differences, I was trying to find a comparison review and they are very hard to come by. This was the only place where I found some image comparisons.

I'm getting new monitors this weekend, after calibrating them, I'm going to check out these images again.

Q2 - the scans from the 640, please confirm, there really is no way to save as TIFF files?

thanks!

[Wayne Fox]

The problem with the 680 is more about not managing the reflections from the e surface paper that most old snapshots are printed on.   If you look carefully at the difference between the two that are enhanced, the contrast difference is being caused by surface reflections of the texture of the print.  You say it’s too contrasty, but in fact it matches the original closer. Most good scanners deal with those reflections from E surface paper pretty well, the 680 seems to have a problem with it.  If you are only scanning photos that are on a smooth paper then this isn’t an issue, but as I mentioned, most color snapshots were printed on paper that had a surface texture to it to minimize fingerprints.

The real problem to me however is the sequence in which a stack is scanned.  The images are stacked in 640 facing forward, and since it scans from the top print down it scans them in order.  If you have a 1000 pictures in a box in order of when they were shot, they end up in the same order in the folder.  The 680 has the prints stack face down, and it still scans from the top down.  The the only way to keep them in order is to scan from the back to the front of the box, and this means the prints are numbered in inverse order to how they were in the box.  I couldn’t figure out an easy way to renumber them so they were in a logical manner, but I really didn’t try because of the reflection problems.

As far as saving as a tiff, not sure, but I don’t think so.  Based on the purpose of the scanner it seems a feature that wouldn’t be worthwhile to add, but maybe the new software update added it.  I won’t be around the scanner for a couple of weeks so really can’t check it.