For the money this device provides excellent results. It's simple to set up and incredibly easy to operate in spite of the lack of a simplified US full color manual. As noted, no SD card is included but is required in order to operate the device so order one if you dont have one on hand. All images are scanned directly onto the SD card and it is not possible to view the images in real time on the PC. After scanning the image/s you can then choose PC from the device menu and open / import the files on the PC via USB. The slide feeder is a real pain in the butt if your slides are not flat and in good condition and in that case forget stacking them. I will not retract a star for this because it works as intended with good flat slides in good condition. If that becomes an issue in your case you can use the provided film tray for slides as well. I love the option to adjust the contrast in real time while scanning without having to go into the menu but I have also found that in most cases adjusting the contrast was a mistake unless the slide was very very dark. The images appear less light / clear on the device screen than the actual scan. I noticed almost no difference in image quality between the 5mp & 10mp scans so I decided to scan everything @ 5mp in case I decide to do any future editing. I am sure a few devices get through that are not quite up to par as is the case with every manufactured device but IMO this device is solid and well worth 50 bucks. I would definitely recommend this device to anyone who just wants to get their collection of home slides digitized on the cheap before they turn to dust. If you've got the money and can afford more then sure, go for bigger and better. Otherwise this will do quite nicely nicely.

It's the right idea. The part I really like is that you can stack a bunch of slides. Most inexpensive units don't have that.It also has fairly wide brightness settings and offers 5m and 10m quality settings.But there is an operational problem with the feed. A couple actually. One problem is design. There is a place where the slides can jam because the pathway from the stack isn't smooth. I took the back cover off the feeder unit, saw the problem and glued a tiny piece of plastic in the spot that jams. So the path is smooth on both sides. Better. Another problem is that slides aren't exactly the same size. So occasionally a slide in the stack won't drop. Just tap on the top slide, they'll usually drop.Also the results can be very contrasty.If you want the best reproduction, you need to buy a more expensive unit.Having said all that, I'm happy with the results. I have digitized hundreds of slides. If the original slide has consistent lighting, the results are usually acceptable.

First, I need to say that when this scanner works, it actually works pretty well. So why the 1-star review?There are several flaws with the device and its software that suggest corners were cut in the design and development, enough testing wasn’t done, or the company was trying to produce the cheapest device possible.Online reviewers have focused most of their criticism on the fact that owners have to provide their own flash memory card. But given how inexpensive these cards are, this is an inconvenience at most.The following problems are far more important.1. The scanner has two settings, 5 megapixels (5M) and “interpolated” 10 megapixels (10M; which means, I guess, the slide is scanned twice at 5 MP and the images combined). Generally, the 10M setting works well, but if the image is too complex somehow, the device simply stops working. There’s no error message, no suggestion to reset to 5M and try again, nothing. It just stops and has to be disconnected from the computer it’s attached to. It can’t even be turned off.2. All slides must be scanned in landscape orientation, no matter how the image was shot. So while the device has an image mirroring/rotation tool, it will not rotate a portrait-oriented image to the correct orientation. And if the user tries to rotate images while viewing them using their computer’s image viewer, they might succeed a few times, but eventually not only will the device lock up, it will lock up their computer as well, forcing them to restart or reboot. Again, there’s no error message, no warning, and nothing in the user manual to warn of this problem. The images can only be rotated to their correct orientation after saving them to another computer.3. The device comes with three feeders: one that holds a strip of five negatives, one with slots for four slides, and one that holds a stack of roughly 20 slides. This latter one seemed like a good idea—it’s something none of the other scanners I considered had—but it doesn’t work. Slide frames vary in thickness—plastic frames are thicker than paper ones—so the feeder has to be able to accommodate all of them. As a result, paper-framed slides don’t consistently push an already-scanned slide out of the way as the user tries to move the next slide into place. It’s a good idea poorly executed.4. I had expected I’d be able to save images directly to my computer but I can’t. Users have to save the images to the flash drive, then link the scanner to the computer and copy them, or power off the scanner, remove the card, put it in the appropriate slot on their computer, and copy them that way. While this is more of an inconvenience than a serious problem, a better design would have allowed saving the images directly to a connected computer.On the positive side, when I’ve contacted DigitNow’s tech support, they’ve been reasonably responsive, getting back to me within 24 hours, and their answers have generally been helpful.Now that I know how to work around or avoid the problems listed above, I can reliably scan a couple dozen slides in about 15 minutes, and the scan quality certainly meets my needs. It’s easy to see why the scanner made it into other online reviewers’ top-10 lists but it would have gotten even better rankings if it had been better designed and the design better executed.

When a low-cost product can be easily adapted to do exactly what you want and with good results, it deserves five stars! This is a very small, well designed, device which in my case, as pictured, sits on a homemade wooden platform, the sole purpose of which is to simplify the task of digitizing several thousand 35mm slides. The platform raises the scanner and makes a place for a box that catches the ejected slide and the support under the slide stacker, keeps the scanner in place, should you need to press down on the loaded slides to compensate for warped or uneven ones that may resist being fed. Configured as shown, I am able to scan about 20 slides a minute. The other units I considered, all use the same four slide holder which, taking into account the loading and unloading time, one would be lucky to do the four in one minute.The screen is small, the price paid for the overall compact design, but an included cable will connect with the AV input of any TV or monitor. The fact that scanned images are stored as JPG images on an SD card means no software to worry about. Scanned image quality is quite good and there are adjustments that can be made. For my purposes, in order to maintain maximum throughput, any editing will be done on a PC.