Home > Consumer Reviews > HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner

I purchased this to replace an older HP scanner that was a good performer,...but wanted to take advantage of the higher data transfer speed of a USB 2 capable computer.
I'm frankly surprised by all the large number of low grades other users have given this machine. It has handled all the following scanning functions easily and with consistenly high quality output:
-Scanning photos to digital files (.tiff, .jpg and other bitmap formats);
-Reprinting photos directly to a photo printer;

-Importing printed materials directly into MS Office documents and Adobe Acrobat documents;
-Direct output of a scanned text document to a printer;
-Scanning negatives to digital files for editing/printing.

Minor...but not serious flaws:
-Other reviewers are correct: it only does 2 35mm negatives/slides at once (but scanners with an auto feed capacity are going to cost 2x-3x as much.
-Two of the 4 front panel buttons are directly related to marginally useful HP-specific functions ("HP Share-to-Web" and "HP Memories Disk"; their apparent presumption is that we don't know how to FTP or author CDs;-
-This model is among the loudest home scanners I've heard.
-The bundled software isn't outstanding, but it's certainly functional (especially if you take some time to customize the settings).

For $..., the digital and hardcopy image/text outputs are highly resolved and crisp

I recently purchased this item from a local electronics store for a really good price (open box items are my best friend). In less than 15 minutes, I was able to scan twenty-one 8.5" x 11" pieces of artwork created by my students. Using the software provided by HP, I also took the items that were created in the landcape mode and rotated them. I renamed them, copied them into a file and also created a photo album. I then printed out the photo album, 15 images per page. OK...so it was able to scan very well. I then decided to test its ability to scan negatives and print them out.

I took a negative that was about 8 years old. Scanned it and then opened it in windows viewer. I printed one slide out as as an 8" x 10" print, and another as a 5" x 7". I printed them out on a laser printer using 600 x 600 dpi. Both printed out very well.

If you want to make money using the scanner, you might want to invest in something more sophisticated. However, it works just fine for the basic user in a home environment.

I chose HP 3970 assuming it was good quality for the price, and that it would be easy to use with my HP Pavilion PC. It is a nice scanner, although a little slow, + does a decent job scanning, BUT the drivers/software is incompatible with a large number of systems. I learned this too late (after my 30 day return period), for i had only done test scans of photos and transparent materials, and a RESTART of my pc, not a cold boot. My pc will not cold boot with the scanner software installed, as there is a conflict with the NVIDIA video chipset which came with the HP pc. So, now i have a new scanner i cannot use without great pains. The next shopper should be forewarned to go to www.hp.com and search for the 3970's known incompatibilities BEFORE spending money. Good luck! :)

For the price of $70-100 there are about 6-7 scanners. I picked HP for a simple reason -- proven durability. We have a couple of HP scanners at work and they've been used heavily for the past 3 years with zero problems. I've talked to many people who had Epsons and they all had problems of various kinds.
For the good: It scannes the old pictures very well. I come from a very "old" family and we have lots of pictures from 1800's. They turned out very good and easy to restore with editing software like the photoshop.
For the not-so-good: The software is a bit "clunky". Seems like it has too many tools that do the same job. A simple all-in-one program would have been just fine.
For the strange: Where's the power switch? You will need to physically unplug it if you'd like to save a couple of KWatts. One star taken off for that.
Otherwise a solid product that does the job.

I should have figured I wouldn't get a great product for such a low price, but I tend to trust HP products.

Scanning photos works fine, but the quality of slide and negative scans is terrible. The slide scans were unusable. Also, it took forever for the lamp to warm up, so even if I had just scanned a photo/slide, I would still have to wait up to 2 minutes for the lamp to warm up again so I could make another scan. I'm returning this unit and looking for another.