The new Astra 4500 from Umax is a low cost but surprisingly fast 1,200 dpi scanner. Using a USB 1.1 interface to good effect at lower resolutions, it does, however, struggle at higher resolutions.

Unfortunately this scanner has a tendency to 'redden up' all the images it scans and at low resolution they are also dark, whereas at higher resolutions the red becomes too bright and the image also begins to lack accuracy.

However, when used at 300 and 600 dpi to scan documents and store images it works reasonable well, and at these resolutions it is also fast; a colour A4 scan took just 35 seconds at 300 dpi.

The Umax 4500 may not have as many buttons as others in this group, but the three provided - scan, copy and e-mail - are basically all you need anyway.

Umax supplies a limited software bundle with the Astra 4500, comprising copies of MGI PhotoSuite SE, TextBridge 2.0 SE for OCR (optical character recognition) and Papercom for document management.

The Astra 4500 is best suited to routine document scanning because of its relatively low image quality at higher resolutions, which is a disappointment as it offers fast scanning at a low cost.