The OneTouch 5600 is a moderately-sized beast, about averagely proportioned for a scanner, with a contoured, grey, semi-transparent lid. It's pretty average in design aspects too with one notable innovation - the lack of a scanner lock. Apparently it's unnecessary as this model is tough enough not to need one to protect it while in transit.

Much like previous scanners in the OneTouch range, the 5600 boasts three one-touch buttons on the front of the unit, which can be programmed to do anything. You can use them to start a pre-programmed scan (specifying colour, black and white, low or high resolution, etc.), copy an image to the printer and so forth. The OneTouch interface used to program these buttons is really well crafted and easy to use.

The driver software is no slouch either. Paperport is also very user-friendly and it even boasts basic image editing functions, such as a red eye removal tool and other simple effects filters. Any hefty image work, however, can be taken care of by the bundled copy of MGI Photosuite III SE, while Xerox Textbridge 8 for OCR is also included in the bundle.

More advanced users may feel a little constrained by Paperport, as it only offers a few tweaks under the advanced menu (contrast, brightness and colour balance). As a driver it is seamless and easy to use, though, and coupled with the excellent OneTouch button system, scanning with the 5600 really is a breeze.

As far as results went, the scanner took 55 seconds on average to conduct our test scan, which is up there with the quickest in the roundup. The image quality was good, with sharply defined edges and decent colour representation, but it was just a tad pale. In fact it was quite similar overall to the test scan the Microtek unit produced, though the 5600 had a touch more clarity. As a final note, this scanner was also the quietest in the roundup, and the cheapest.