The Best Photo Scanners We’ve Tested (June 2025)

The Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 is an under-$100, entry-level flatbed photo scanner. But it fills a nifty niche for nonprofessional photographers who need to scan both photos and, from time to time, documents. Since it doesn’t have an automatic document feeder (ADF), it’s not your best choice for frequent multipage jobs, but it combines document management and optical character recognition (OCR) with impressive photo scanning and touch-up software. It also saves desk space with a vertical kickstand and can stitch together multiple scans of plus-size photos.

The LiDE 400 lacks Wi-Fi or wired networking, but it capably serves a personal or small-office PC connected via USB. Its vibrant color and crisp detail make it a great pick for light-duty photo-quality scanning.

Want higher-quality scans of photo prints than your typical multifunction printer/copier/scanner can provide, but don’t need to scan film? Head straight for the Epson Perfection V39 II, an affordable flatbed photo scanner that also scans to editable text and searchable PDF formats. Its resolution is fine-grained enough to let you crop and enlarge a small section of a photo. And it gives you a choice of an easy Automatic mode, or granular settings such as a Remove Background option that lets you erase distracting background elements from your scanned image.

With a single USB cable for both power and data and a semi-vertical kickstand that saves desk space, the Perfection V39 II is simple to operate, and it outshines its competitors at also handling the occasional short document. Both casual and serious photographers will find it a good deal.

Sometimes every cent counts. Canon’s CanoScan LiDE 300 has only half the resolution and is a tad slower than the LiDE 400 that earned a PCMag Editors’ Choice award, and it lacks that flatbed’s ability to stand upright to save desk space. But it costs around a Jackson less and combines good photo scanning quality with a helpful software bundle. Its adjustable lid accommodates thicker items such as books and magazines, as well as prints.

We wouldn’t call the CanoScan LiDE 300 better than its model 400 sibling or Epson’s abovementioned Perfection V39, but it does a great job of digitizing photos on a budget. Its Fading Correction and Auto Dust & Scratch Reduction filters pep up aging prints, and it’s a solid choice for dorm rooms and other low-volume scanning environments.

Got a shoebox full of snapshots? You need Epson’s FastFoto FF-680W, whose automatic document feeder (ADF) is specially designed to handle stacks of prints. (It has plastic guides with marks for 5-by-7- and 4-by-6-inch originals, and it can adjust to other sizes.) It feeds through stacks of pics without tearing or creasing them as a text-oriented scanner’s feeder might. It’s much quicker than manually placing photos on a flatbed scanner’s glass, one after the other, and it does a decent job of turning document pages into searchable PDF or Word files when you’ve emptied the shoebox.

Home archivists who want to digitize stacks and scrapbooks full of photo prints will think the FastFoto FF-680W is heaven-sent. It’s smart about scanning both sides of postcards and other items (ignoring flip sides if they’re blank). And it can help you rotate, crop, or restore images or upload them to Dropbox or Google Drive.

Enterprise-class photo and document scanners aren’t inexpensive gear, and the Canon imageFormula DR-S350NW is no exception. But it’s worth the hefty price tag: The S350NW is a speedy digitizer that can help you convert your stacks of pics to shareable, editable, and printable files. In our testing, all the scans were clean and professional-looking, and scanned photographic images showed pleasing and accurate colors with an appropriate amount of contrast. Once you’ve tackled your lifetime backlog of snaps, you don’t have to retire it or sell it; it can serve on as an able document scanner. (Maybe you’d like to empty that stuffed file cabinet next?)

Looking to digitize a lifetime’s worth of snapshots (followed by those old paper tax returns)? The Canon DR-S350NW is a great solution for photo hoarders, declutterers, genealogy buffs, and scrapbookers. It’s designed for office use and priced to match, but it’s also ideal as a shared-cost purchase for a family or a circle of friends, passing it around as each group digitizes their paper-snapshot life in turn.

Plustek’s ePhoto Z300 is a sheetfed rather than flatbed photo scanner, which makes it snappy at processing a stack of prints even though, with no automatic document feeder (ADF), you must insert items one at a time. It’s also affordable—one-third the price of Epson’s FastFoto FF-680W—and scans up to letter-size prints, with a gentle feed mechanism that won’t damage old or fragile photos. Its document-scanning abilities are limited, and its photo quality is no match for fancier scanners, but it’s fine for household tasks such as archiving snapshots.

If you have a bunch of family photos that need digital preservation, and you don’t have the patience to place them one or two at a time on a flatbed scanner, the ePhoto Z300 and its bundled software are a handy solution. The Epson FastFoto offers both higher volume and better quality, but it costs a lot more.

The Epson FastFoto FF-680W’s automatic feeder can scan up to 36 prints in one gulp. The ClearClick QuickConvert 2.0 scans only one photo at a time, but on the other hand it’s portable and can scan slides and negatives as well as prints. This four-pound, battery-powered gadget has a 2.4-inch color LCD for viewing images or making setup changes, and it comes with an assortment of bases and holders for everything from 4-by-6-inch snapshot prints to 126 or 110 negatives. It offers resolution up to 14 megapixels, and it supports Wi-Fi as well as USB connectivity. (Plus, you can scan to SD memory cards.)

Casual archivists will be satisfied with this model, though the ClearClick requires a little patience to use. It’s more for casual or everyday snapshots than prized wedding or prom photos. But it’s a simple device for consumers who don’t need professional imaging quality. For short stacks rather than shoeboxes or scrapbooks full of pics, it does the trick.