The Epson FastFoto FF-680W has become my new favorite toy. I’ve had containers full of photos from when I was an amateur photographer and took a few rolls of film a day that I’ve wanted to make digital. My Doxie scanner was great, but it was time-consuming to scan one photo at a time. FastFoto lets me scan up to 30 photos in a matter of seconds. Not only does it scan, it lets me digitally organize them into folders with corresponding names.
Let’s just face it: 2020 has sucked. While using the FastFoto though to scan my memories, I was reminded of my son’s Easter photos, his first trip to Star Wars Weekends at Hollywood Studios in Florida. I found my wedding reception photos and for the first time, I actually looked through most of them. I’ve done three containers at this point and found countless memories that I had forgotten about through the process.
In an age where so much is digital, it was nice to take a step back in time and scan hard copy photos that I could hold in my hands instead of just flipping through on my phone or Facebook.
Setup
Let’s talk setup. It took me about 15 minutes to get the scanner software installed on my Mac (also Windows compatible) and then wirelessly connecting the scanner. You can hard wire it as well, but I don’t need any more wires than I already have in my little “office” area. I don’t think it scans any slower doing it wirelessly so there’s really no loss if you can connect that way.
Scanning
When you start scanning, you are given the opportunity to organize your batches by date, month, and subject. When I know all three, I use all three. Otherwise, I stick to just a name. You can scan up to 30 photos per batch but you can continue scanning into the same folder until you tell it you’re done. So if you have 45 photos of little Han’s 5th birthday party, don’t worry, they will all end up in the same place even though you divide them up into two groups.
Likes
- Scans photos and documents
- Can scan up to 30 photos at a time
- Special protector for photos that are 3×5 or smaller or photos with rough edges or just not in the greatest condition
- Easy to set up
Dislikes
- If you put your photos in any kind of specific order, they will not come out of the scanner in that same order.
Overall
I’m very satisfied with the FastFoto. It helped me scan years of photos in a matter of an hour or so and now all my memories are digital to share with my son and future generations. I’m impressed by its speed, ease of set up, and how it lets me organize my photos as I scan them rather than having to do it all after the fact. It’s a bit pricy at a retail of $599.99 but it’s worth it if you have a lot of photos to scan, and since it doubles as a document scanner when your photo scanning is done, it has a new job.
FastFoto FF-680W retails for $599.99 and is available wherever Epson products are sold.
Disclaimer: GeekMom was given a review sample.
