The Astra 6450 is slow despite its FireWire interface, and delivers only moderate quality transparency scans.

The Astra 6450 comes in an attractive two-tone finish, with a neat transparency adapter fitted in the lid and three one-touch buttons -- for scanning and copying, plus a third function of your choice. The scanning head moves from back to front, so you position originals the right way up on the bed.

Umax supplies its own VistaScan software with the Astra 6450, and although (like several others) it can be run in beginner or advanced modes, the advanced mode still doesn't enable you to set resolution or colour depth explicitly. You can't enter height or width values for the scan area either; instead, you have to adjust a selection marquee while watching the co-ordinates under the preview pane.

Scanning is a noisy business -- the Astra 6450 sounds like a vintage limo turning over on an early electric starter -- and requires a warm-up period before each scan that can take up to 15 seconds. This rather negates the fast data transfer rate of which the IEEE 1394 link is capable.

With an optical resolution of only 600dpi, you'll be pushed to get satisfactory scans of transparencies from this scanner. Tests with closely printed parallel lines showed poor definition, and this will be especially noticeable with high-resolution originals such as photographic slides or negatives.

Colour quality is generally fair, with well captured tones in both pastels and more vivid shades. Scans are dark by default, though, with our grey strip sample veering off towards black much sooner than with the other scanners. Although this can be compensated for with gamma adjustment, many people will use the scanner on automatic settings and may suffer dark scans as a result.

We weren't over-enamoured by the Astra 6450, despite its low price and IEEE 1394 interface: unfortunately, it's also noisy and hampered by a low optical resolution. Scanner vendors will insist that resolutions of 200-300dpi are all that's needed for general work, but this isn't true for transparencies -- and the inclusion of a transparency adapter does imply that Umax expects you to try and use it.

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