With the advent of digital camera memory cards and the all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax, you might think that the days of the humble stand-alone scanner have become numbered. However, there are still plenty of people who want to save their transparencies to a PC file or copy large scale photos, books and documents, who are looking for the superior quality that stand-alone scanners often deliver compared with their multi-tasking cousins.

Epson's Perfection V200 Photo is a stylish, slim, black and silver work of beauty that will fit comfortably on your desktop and is designed for ease of operation. Once you've plugged in the power, loaded the driver and software and attached the USB lead, then you're ready to go, using either the four control buttons or the Epson Scan software.

The extendable side hinge means that documents up to 25mm thick can be scanned with the lid closed and, when fully open to 180 degrees, it can copy large documents and books with heavy spines. There's an additional transparency unit that can hold six frames of 35mm film or four slide frames at once.

Apart from the on/off button, the other controls enable you to perform multiple scans to PDF files and to e-mail as well as conventional copies. Speed has been made a priority with the power button activating the scanner almost immediately as well as powering down within three seconds. Because the scanner is also Energy Star compliant, it has a power saving mode that automatically kicks in after 15 minutes of inactivity.

The clarity, colour authenticity and sharpness of the scans are of a high standard thanks to the impressive 4,800dpi optical resolution, using Epson's Matrix CCD (12 line colour) technology. Another innovation over previous models in the series is the Auto Photo Orientation feature which straightens up photos that have been placed crookedly on the flatbed, and the dust removal sensors have also been improved.

The Auto Photo Orientation feature is just part of the included Epson Scan 3.1 software. If you want to edit scanned documents, you'll be pleased to learn you also receive ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint (for optical character recognition) and ArcSoft PhotoImpression 6 (to help sort and organise your scanned photos) as part of the package. Epson's excellent Creativity Suite is also there to martial your printing needs and this too has had a slight upgrade with a new red-eye reduction feature.

Epson has once again produced a high quality, low cost yet stylish scanner which both looks good and contains a number of new and improved features, all for a more than reasonable price.