It's Epson's cheapest stand-alone scanner, but not quite cheap enough
Epson’s Perfection V37 is an A4 general-purpose scanner with a top resolution of 4,800 dots per inch (dpi). To put that into some kind of perspective, it can scan a postage stamp and produce an image that has more detail than the new 4K Ultra High Definition television standard. It also scans documents of course, but lacks the backlight necessary to scan slides or negatives - for that you need the Perfection V370, which costs about £20 more.
Epson’s software makes this scanner a delight to use. The main interface has several modes, from fully automatic for novices through to a comprehensive range of Professional options. The Home mode strikes an ideal balance. We particularly like its thumbnail feature, which automatically crops and separates multiple small documents scanned simultaneously - a great way to capture batches of photos, business cards and receipts. Usefully, accurate optical character recognition (OCR) software is included too.
Scanning took no time in our tests, and the scans’ quality was excellent, with great colour accuracy and no loss of detail in either very light or very dark areas. The only niggle is that photos scanned at the very highest resolution suffered from a little soft focus.
The V37 is a very good scanner, but it’s not far and away better than the scanner you’d find in a good Epson or Canon multifunction printer (MFP), such as the similarly priced Canon Pixma MG5650. Given that, we’d only recommend it if you never scan slides or negatives, and are dead set against an MFP. If you fall into that bracket, then it’s a great buy.
A high-quality scanner with niche appeal - costing marginally less than the best mid-range MFPs yet it scans only slightly better.
SPECIFICATIONS
A4 flatbed • 4800x4800dpi maximum scan resolution • USB; 41x280x430mm (HxWxD) • 2.2kg One-year warranty