The Pan’s Memory Card Station is an Modular Photo Offloading Tool
The Pan’s Workflow Station is a card reader hub device that allows photographers to offload multiple memory cards at once, and it does so for notably cheaper than other options.
Professional photographers and videographers often have to deal with multiple memory cards full of data, and offloading them one by one is a tedious and time-consuming process. That’s where memory card workstations come into play, and the Pan’s Workflow Station by Pergear comes in significantly more affordably than the competition.
For a long time, Lexar made the best version of this type of tool available, but that’s no longer available and there aren’t very many options available since the advent of USB-C. SanDisk’s Pro-Dock 4 is the closest high-end successor to what Lexar made, but it costs $500 — and that’s before adding up to four modular readers that start at $80 but can be as much as $200 each. Pegear is filling out the options a bit more with its $350 Pan’s Workflow station, a price that includes four modular readers.
The Pan’s Memory Card Station is likely able to cut down on price because it’s smaller, simpler, and doesn’t use Thunderbolt connections. Instead, it relies on USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps, which Pergear says allows 1GB of files to be transferred in less than two seconds and measures at a speed of 680 MB/s. That speed is way beyond any SD or microSD card and is high enough to dump from CFexpress at a fast pace as well. Basically, for most users, the bottleneck won’t be the reader, but the memory card.
Like all workstation hubs, the Pan’s station allows all four slots to be used at the same time and can be mixed and matched depending on need. The company makes four different modular inserts for the main base station: a dual microSD module, a USB-only module, a dual SD card module, and a single CFexpress Type B module. The microSD and USB modules can be purchased individually for $50, while the SD module costs $60 and the CFexpress module costs $70. The hub can be purchased empty (which means users would have to buy the modules independently, but it does allow them to pick the ones they want) or with one of each of the four modules and another with all but the CFexpress module.
Just like with other workflow stations, each of the modules can function on its own in addition to working inside the main hub unit.
The aluminum build and overall design is very similar to the Kingston workflow station as are the performance promises, although Kingston doesn’t offer a CFexpress reader which, for many, makes it a non-starter.
Because it isn’t Thunderbolt, the amount of total bandwidth that USB-C can handle is capped, so offload speeds are likely less than what can be achieved with the SanDisk Pro-Dock 4. But, since the Pan’s costs less fully loaded than the SanDisk does without any modules, many might find that to be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. It’s also compatible with mobile devices, Macs, and PCs.
The Pan’s Workflow Station Professional Card Reader Hub can be purchased directly from Pergear.
Image credits: Pergear
