Review: The Epson FastFoto (aka The World’s Fastest Photo Scanner)

A few years ago I was contacted by a company that offered to scan some old family photos in exchange for a blog post. My grandmother had just gone into a nursing home and we had boxes and boxes of photos. I gathered several hundred of the most precious and sent them away.

To make a long story short, my photos got lost in the mail. We are talking some of the only photos on the planet of my ancestors through my dad’s childhood. It was devastating. Miraculously, months later, the photos were found at a random post office in East Tennessee. Because of a name on the back of one of the photos, the post office clerk found a distant relative and we got the photos back. (The package included no real identifying info because it was all a series of numbers from the scanning company.)

Needless to say, I never will send my photos anywhere again. Because of this, you can imagine my delight when I was contacted by an Epson representative about a brand new photo scanner they were launching. The rep claimed that the Epson FastFoto FF-680—the so-called fastest personal photo scanner in the world—would change everything I knew and had experienced with previous photo scanners.

Of course, I was curious. As a photo and memory enthusiast, how could I not be curious about a fast and, not go mention, wireless photo scanner?

But I’m also very familiar with photo scanners, having had used them often, both for work and hobby purposes—so I was skeptical too. Anytime I used a photo scanner, I did so begrudgingly because I found them cumbersome and slow and often not very user friendly.

Despite my doubt, I told Epson to send me one of their miracle scanners for me to use on a trial run.

And oh my gosh, for somebody like me—a photo lover whose greatest fear is that all of my memories will start to discolor and age or get ruined—the Epson FastFoto really is a game changer.

It’s fast—like seriously fast—in many cases, one-photo-per-second fast! And it’s wireless, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you’re scanning a huge number of photos and those photos are dropping right into a file on your laptop without having to plug something in.

The set-up was quite easy and once you have the program installed, it is just a few clicks and you are scanning and saving. Elias and Adeline have enjoyed helping me scan 100s of photos.

Now the $500 price tag is a bit steep compared to a flatbed scanner, but this scanner is 1,000 times better and faster. And honestly, if you have hundreds and hundreds of old photos, you would easily pay the same for a company to do your scanning. My kids actually wanted to start a business scanning other people’s photos – ha! 🙂

Check out the Epson FastFoto here. 

Adeline and I also did a demo on Facebook Live, which you can watch below.

Thank you to Epson for graciously allowing me the fall and winter to really test and use this scanner on loan. It is an incredible machine and I told Matthew I want to buy one now!