ClearClick QuickConvert 2.0

Apparently, even in this age of smartphone snapshots there are still enough photos, slides, and negatives stashed in kitchen drawers and shoeboxes under beds to justify a photo scanner. One of our Editors' Choice winners, the Epson FastFoto FF-680W, has an automatic document feeder (ADF) that can scan up to 36 prints in one go. By contrast, ClearClick's $185.95 QuickConvert 2.0 holds only one photo at a time, so working your way through that shoebox full of prints, negatives, and slides may take a while. But the QuickConvert's scan quality and ease of use render it a highly capable, pleasant-to-operate photo media scanner for personal or family use.

Portable and Petite

Aside from the Epson FastFoto mentioned above, most photo scanners—such as Canon's CanoScan LiDE 400, Visioneer's 700 Tag That Photo Scanner, and Epson's Perfection V19—are flatbeds: You lay your photos on the glass one at a time, and the sensor passes beneath them. With the QuickConvert 2.0, instead of bringing your photos to the scanner, you bring the scanner to your photos. I'll explain what that means and how to use the device in a moment, but let's first take a look at the hardware.

Measuring 7.8 by 12.1 by 9.3 inches and weighing about 4 pounds, the QuickConvert 2.0 is relatively small and bears little resemblance to most of its competitors. The Epson FastFoto is similar in size and weight, although it operates differently. Plustek's ePhoto Z300, a manual sheetfed photo scanner priced comparably to the ClearClick, is also similar in footprint and weight, though it can scan photos up to letter size. The flatbed scanners are necessarily longer and wider. 

Whether you're scanning a snapshot, slide, or negative, the process is essentially the same: You specify whether you're scanning a photo or negative via the control panel, make a few configuration tweaks, and then shoot film, so to speak. As you can see in the image below, the panel is anchored by a 2.4-inch color LCD (not a touch screen) for viewing images or making setup changes.

The QuickConvert 2.0 can run on either an included rechargeable battery or USB power from a desktop or laptop. You can operate the scanner without a computer or handheld device by scanning directly to an also included 32GB SD card while on the road. Back home or at the office, you can upload the flash card's contents to your PC, smartphone, or tablet and use, edit, or enhance images as desired.

Using the QuickConvert 2.0

The procedure varies slightly for photos, slides, or negatives. One of ClearClick's touted benefits of using this little scanner is that no matter where your photos are located, such as in a photo album, you can scan them without removing them, as shown below.

You can also place 4-by-6-inch or smaller photos in a detachable base that holds them in place during scanning.

To scan 35mm slides and negatives, you place them in one of four holders provided (for 35mm negatives, 35mm slides, 126 negatives, and 110 negatives).

Each holder accepts a different number of items. The 35mm negative holder, for instance, holds two film strips measuring 6 inches or so, while the 35mm slide holder accepts three slides and the 126 and 110 negative holders hold seven and eight respectively.

Next, insert the holder into the slot on the right side of the scanner, directly beneath the control panel. As you slide the holder back and forth, the images on the slides or negatives are previewed on the display.

For its part, the rechargeable and replaceable battery slips into a compartment on the back of the chassis, just beneath the SD card slot.

It's important to note that, according to ClearClick, the QuickConvert 2.0 can scan your images with resolution settings up to 14 megapixels. After digitizing your photos, you can edit and enhance them with the PhotoPad Pro software that you can license and download for free during installation.

Swift Scans, Average Quality

ClearClick claims that the QuickConvert 2.0 takes one to three seconds to scan each photo, which may sound fast until you consider that scanning a stack of pics at two seconds apiece translates to 30 images per minute. As essentially a single-sheet scanner, the device obliges you to clock not only the scan time but that taken to remove one image and insert the next. Flatbed photo scanners we've tested operate at similar speeds, but how fast they are in practice depends on how quickly you can unload and reload images. The Canon LiDE 400 scans and saves a snapshot in about four seconds, with the Plustek Z300 perhaps a little slower.

With slides and negatives, as mentioned, you can load anywhere from three to eight images at a time. That's a far cry from professional-grade slide and film scanners such as the $3,999 Epson Expression 12000XL-PH, which can handle several photos or as many as 15 35mm slides in one pass.

The QuickConvert 2.0 is certainly not a professional solution, but its scan quality is more than adequate for personal use and most everyday photos, if perhaps not prom, birthday, and other special-event memories. The maximum page size is 4 by 6 inches, but I had to do some experimenting to get my photos centered so edges weren't inadvertently cropped and images displayed in the frame properly. 

I got the hang of it, but now and then a photo still came out with a little too much of one edge missing. This was more annoying than unattractive, however. Otherwise, colors were appealing and accurate, with minimal color shifts, little to no graininess, and respectable detail. I've no complaints about the scanner's image quality.

Digitizing Your Photos One at a Time

ClearClick's marketing materials claim that the QuickConvert 2.0 makes short work of scanning thousands of photos. I guess that's technically true, but know that you'll be interacting with the machine manually and will likely have to fiddle slightly with nearly every scan. If you're like me and don't have the patience to scan piles of photos or slides in single file, you might be better off with a scanner like Epson's FastFoto that can partly automate the process. In any case, the QuickConvert 2.0 is a simple device that's easy to use and delivers better-than-acceptable results. If you're patient, it'll get the job done.