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REVIEW:

Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 large format scanner

... Continued. [Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 - previous] [Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 - next]

Speed

We measured the time it took to scan an A0 (E-size) sheet at 200 and 400 dpi from the clicking of the "scan" button to the Ci 40's ScanWorks software becoming available again after the scan. This is our standard large format scanner speed test.

Our test PC was a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with 1Gb RAM. This is the same PC that has been used for the speed measurements of all the scanners below with the exception of the Contex HD4230i, which was tested on a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with 1Gb RAM.

  Image Access WideTEK 36 Contex SD4490 (1) Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40e (2) Graphtec CSX300 (3) Colortrac Cx 40e Contex HD4230i Graphtec CS600 (3)(4)
Black and white
200 dpi 7 sec 7 sec 13 sec 9 sec 13 sec 9 sec 33 sec
400 dpi 17 sec 12 sec 29 sec 17 sec 24 sec 10 sec 38 sec
Greyscale
200 dpi 7 sec 7 sec 10 sec 10 sec 13 sec 12 sec 32 sec
400 dpi 17 sec 20 sec 22 sec 21 sec 24 sec 27 sec 33 sec
24-bit Colour
200 dpi 7 sec 19 sec 19 sec 23 sec 36 sec 35 sec 40 sec
400 dpi 17 sec 63 sec 46 sec 68 sec 80 sec 105 sec 60 sec


(1) The specs of the PC used to time the scans are below Contex's recommended specs of a 1.66GHz Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, a 7200rpm SATA hard drive with 5GB free space and a high speed USB 2.0 interface.
(2) Timed using ScanWorks software which scans in greyscale even when you do a black and white scan. This confers a productivity benefit onto the scanner by allowing scan settings to be modified after scanning without a need to rescan.
(3) Timed using High Quality mode.
(4) Now replaced by the Graphtec CS610 and updated Scanning Master software which may scan faster.

Compared to the other scanners we have timed, the Ci 40 is relatively slow when scanning in black and white but fast when scanning in colour.

The reason that its black and white speed is relatively slow is that although the resultant scan is black and white, the scanner is actually scanning in greyscale. This is what gives the Ci 40 with ScanWorks software its "scan once" ability, allowing you to make changes to the scan settings without having to rescan the drawing (see Selecting scan settings is easy).

Although this means that the initial scan may be slower than with some other scanners, it will give you a time advantage in any situation where you need to select appropriate settings for individual scans rather than just scanning as fast as possible with no attention to drawing detail.

Points to note are:

  • All Ci 40 scanner models - m, c and e - have the same black and white and greyscale scan speeds. The Ci 40c has a slower published colour scan speed than the Ci 40e tested here.

  • Remember that raw scanner speed itself is only part of the speed equation. The length of time it takes to scan a drawing is also dependent on the type of drawings you are scanning and the capabilities of the scanning software you use.

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