Great Scanner
I have had a lot of scanners,but this scanner is the best I have had so far.My last two scanners were HP and the worlds worst.I just gave them away.I have had this little beauty just two days and I have scanned over 200 documents and photos and not a slight problem.I would tell anybody to buy this scanner.It is so easy to use.

Perfect for the price
I work in a small office and we needed a way to get catalog images onto our website and we've only been using it for a couple of weeks, so this review won't discuss high-quality, large image uses or the scanners longevity. That being said, everything we were looking for and hoped that it would have, it does...and in June 2009, it was only 0 U.S. dollars.

It was easy to set up and gave the option during set up to unselect the additional software options (always a plus in my opinion). The first thing I noticed after having it setup is that it's really quiet but I'm comparing to another scanner we purchased 2 years ago, an HP Scanjet 5590, which is industrial-loud (and happens to be the reason we're buying a dedicated "website scanner") so I was pleased with the only slightly high-pitched motor sound coming from this Epson v300. It has quick-use buttons that do more than we need from our scanner. In fact, they're also programmable with more than the default options (and can be set up using the "Epson Event Manager" software which offers some very elaborate options...search that name on the internet for more info). We only need the scan-to-file button but here's the results of my testing the default options:

1) The scan-to-email button offered 4 size options before attaching the scan directly to a new email (small, med, large, original).
2) The scan-to-printer button that allows you to chose a printer and some other features at the time of scan. It's emulating a copy machine and offers similar options like brightness and paper source along with it's own proprietary settings like dust removal and text enhancement (I didn't test any of these proprietary features).
3) The scan-to-PDF button was the only disappointment in these button options. I scanned a two-page, black-and-white, invoice and while it put them both into the same PDF file, the file size was huge (1 MB). I'm pretty sure if I went into Acrobat I could get this size down but we aren't going to use this feature (again, it's purpose was to get images for our website.) In retrospect, I didn't install the OCR-text software so perhaps this will interface with the scanner and offer a smaller PDF size.
4) The scan-to-file button. This is why we bought the thing so I was very happy that this works so well. After an initial set-up, this can be set to not prompt the user and with the press of a button, the image gets dumped to a network folder where our webmaster can work with it to get it ready for the website. So while it's not a network printer, it can be set up to scan to a dedicated folder on a mapped network drive (tech note: I don't have access to test it right now, but I'm pretty sure it will take UNC paths too).

It has 4 modes that can be used which progress from 'Full-Auto' mode which is the simplest, easiest interface up to 'Professional' mode which offers many color/sizing settings. We've been 100% using Full-Auto mode and the scans look great so I imagine the other modes will offer some nice fine-tuning features for those that need it.

As for image quality, I'm not a guru in digital images so I can only offer this layman's perspective. It's defaulted at 300 DPI and it goes up to 1200 DPI, maybe higher (check the specifications on their website, I'm not certain if it goes higher but I know it goes to at least 1200). The 300 DPI looks great. I can open the image with the Microsoft Office Picture Manager, zoom in to 200% and see very little granularity on just an average catalog page (thin paper, medium gloss). I figure this is secondary for someone shopping in the "economy" line of scanners anyway.

I have only a few, petty complaints and what would a review be if they weren't included.

1) The one complaint you'll read about from many others is the power/data cord placement. They're right beside the bottons at the front which is only midly annoying.
2) Every scanner has "the corner". The primary corner that you place the the document in. Typically, this is the upper-left corner. On this scanner, they chose the lower-left corner which means you have to place the document upside down. This too is only mildly annoying as the lid is detachable to accomodate any size document/catalog.
3) Scan review. The scanner will scan the document once for the convenience of a scan review and then, while you're looking at the review, it's doing a slightly slower, deeper scan for the main image capture. Only one or two modes offer the option to NOT do a scan review. Full Auto mode is not one of those modes. I'd like the ability to turn this off, but I don't think it's possible. Again, this is only mildly annoying as the pre-scan and full-scan both go fairly quickly. Perhaps the Epson Event Manager will offer this ability but for now I don't have time to test that.

Awesome...
Very happy with the V300 Photo Scanner. Delivery of item was prompt and a very competitive lower price.
Would recommend to anyone looking to save old slides
and fotos to computer & disk......
Tito / Bronx, N.Y.

Perfection is a good name for this scanner!
When my old scanner died, and I couldn't replace the poisonous mercury-vapor lamp, I knew that I wanted not only a new scanner, but new technology. I found it in the Epson Perfection V300. I appreciate it's compact size, high resolution (more than I will ever need), and affordable price. But as a green-minded (read, responsible) person, I was STOKED about the new LED lamp. It scans faster, has no warm-up time, superlative color rendition, doesn't cook my artwork, and best of all, NO MERCURY! Add to this the fact that this baby will probably still be scanning like a champ in the year 2035 (LEDs last at least that long) and I'd call that Perfection!

Epson V300 Scanner
This was so easy to start using and the quality is wonderful. Am very glad I bought this.