The philosophy underpinning the Mustek range of BearPaw scanners has been on ease of use, and a degree of aesthetics. In the past, this has led to occasional criticisms that the scanner itself doesn't compare too strongly with others in the same price bracket, but has still made the BearPaw a good choice for the casual user.

With the new 2400TA Pro however, Mustek has pretty much followed the same template. Still retaining the distinctive 'paw' arrangement of buttons on the front, it's quite a slimline device that requires a USB connection, power supply and five minutes of software installation to get up and running. In theory, those buttons allow you to scan to file, copy, fax or e-mail without fiddling with software. These do actually work very well, and provided you're not after astounding results, can perform the designated tasks to a decent quality.

Claiming to have an optical resolution of 1,200 x 2,400dpi, the output from the 2400TA Pro was a little disappointing. We tried some high colour, full A4 scans. At 1,200dpi, the scanner took 12 minutes and 20 seconds to do its work, and that was at the third attempt after the system stalled twice mid-scan. This included a 40 second warm up, which we found the 2400 was keen to go through at regular intervals. The image itself was okay, but we did expect better having been made to wait so long for it! At 100dpi, once past the elongated warm up process, it still took 30 seconds to have an image scanned in and ready. That's quite disappointing, especially as the quality of the picture itself turned out to be not too hot.

These are issues that are likely to deter the more serious user, and rightly so, although the inclusion of a transparency adapter is very much in Mustek's favour. However, the casual user doesn't have as much need to be dismissive here. There's a welcome simplicity to the BearPaw's operation, and that's backed up by an impressive software suite that covers the key functions you'd expect. Included is Ulead's PhotoExpress 4.0, OCR software and Mustek's own capable utilities and simplified control panel (a more advanced one is available, but it takes a bit of fiddling to find it).

In all, the 2400TA Pro is easy to set up, and the images it produces are okay for most tasks. It falls down thanks to the time it takes to do its work, and the strength of the opposition, who on this evidence, are moving that bit faster than Mustek.

The 2400TA Pro is not bad for an undemanding user (especially if a transparency adapter is a requirement), but you can get better performance for your money elsewhere.