New scanner recommendations?

...I'm in the market. Now I'm just stuck wondering what actually matters—resolution, price point, brand reliability... all that stuff.

I've pulled together a few options within the budget I'm planning to allocate for a scanner. I would appreciate some insight.

Epson Perfection V370

Epson FastFoto

HP G2410

Epson Perfection V300

There they are.

That’s the right way to look at it. You set a budget, find some decent branded scanners that hit your requirements, and call it a day. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.

Both Canon and HP make solid gear...

I’m using an Epson FastFoto and I’m happy with it. I don't do anything crazy intensive, and the landscape orientation works fine for me. It comes with a slide adapter and a user-friendly software bundle that's great for people who just want things to work out of the box, though you can still dive into the manual settings if you need to. It’s fast enough for my needs, and honestly, I’m done looking.

Excellent, thanks taipan!

I've been heading down that same line of thinking myself.
Following that logic, I actually decided to take things a step further.
I've settled on picking up an all-in-one inkjet device

HP Envy 7640e

It’s intended for my home office... just scanning the occasional photo or sketch here and there, plus you can never go wrong having a reliable printer on hand. This particular model seems like the best value given the number of individual ink cartridges available (which I can pick up with a chip for about $8, or much cheaper if I skip the chip), and the scanner resolution is quite decent for a unit like this—actually higher than the resolution on the scanner that recently died on me, which served my office needs perfectly well.

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts as well.