Pantum P3010D/P3010DW: concise fullness

Here is your sword

Today, in the entire IT industry, service models are in vogue instead of transactional ones: at times it seems that “everything-as-a-service” and the flow of CAPEX into OPEX is really more convenient and profitable than the good old formula “bought – installed – works”. Strictly speaking, almost until the outbreak of COVID-19, this was approximately the case – at least in those markets where the provision of IT services has managed to develop into a solid industry. “The customer doesn’t need a printer; the customer needs a document printed on a printer ”- under this slogan the outsourcing of document management systems flourished. You see, if not for the coronacrisis…

But the corona crisis happened, and the instant disruption of supply chains, which have been fine-tuned for decades, clearly demonstrated how fragile the complex service economy is. Yes, in the absence of global cataclysms, everything went like clockwork: converting capital costs into operating costs by eliminating on-premises printers, clearly controlling the cost of each printed page according to the price list of an outsourcer partner, thereby expanding the horizons of confident planning of non-production costs – this is great with point of view of any customer.

Correction: it was great until the gears of the global IT pipeline suddenly slowed down with a terrible rattle – and then it became obvious to many customers that it was not a crane of reduced CAPEX in the sky that was good, but a titmouse of office equipment ready for work in their hands. Employees transferred to remote work massively rushed to buy (some at a corporate expense, and some with their hard-earned money) home inexpensive printers for the sake of their most basic function: printing itself. Translation of digital documents into physical copies on paper sheets.

This, as it turned out, is the most important thing, and not at all the convenience of controlling the device from the cloud, not the size of the touch control screen, and not the courage of the design solution of the case. The printer should be able to print well, and that’s the point – over the past couple of years, marketers, including the world’s leading vendors of printing devices, have begun to assimilate this simple idea with some even amazement.

Of course, with the transition of offices from a completely remote to a distributed mode of operation, ultra-fast economical corporate machines, a variety of connection options, and developed mechanisms for controlling user actions (so as not to find out later, with the involvement of private detectives, who it is and from what remote location sent to the office printer the full text of “Justine, or Virtue’s Misfortunes” without cuts and with frivolous classical illustrations…).

But still, the niche of simple, laconic in design, severely limited in functionality of printers, which gradually withered until the beginning of 2020, has clearly come to life by now, including on the Russian market. Direct evidence of this is the P3010D/P3010DW models presented by the Pantum brand, which almost fully meet the definition of “just a printer, and nothing more”. And nothing more than that to the user of such a device, as it is now crystal clear to everyone, is not required in 95% of cases, or even more often.

Fast, quiet, square

More precisely, almost cubic: the dimensions of the basic version of the P3010 series machine, which differs in the suffix D, are 354 × 334 × 218 mm. The monochrome laser printer warms up to deliver the first page in no more than 7.8 seconds, and then prints at a resolution of up to 1200×1200 dpi at a nominal speed of 30 ppm (A4 format, measured by the manufacturer according to ISO/IEC 24734). The amount of internal memory is 128 MB, which is enough for the vast majority of application scenarios for private users, small and medium-sized businesses.

The device is equipped with the simplest LED indicator, since it provides only direct connection to a PC via a USB cable, therefore, it has nothing to signal to the owner, except for its readiness for work or the presence of any problems (paper jam, sheet skew, etc.) .)

The maximum number of A4 pages that Pantum P3010D/P3010DW is ready to print per month is stated at 60 thousand, the recommended more realistic limit is up to 3.5 thousand, that is, over 100 pages per day. For a medium-sized department, a small branch of a geographically distributed company, and even more so for a home office, this is more than acceptable.

It’s also important to note that the P3010D/P3010DW’s other top-of-the-line features include automatic two-sided printing. Entry-level printers do not often have this capability – and in terms of convenience and cost-effectiveness, especially if you constantly have to convert multi-page documents from digital to physical, automatic two-sided printing is worth a lot.

The devices in question are equipped with three standard trays: one input for 250 sheets (ready to accept paper with a density of 60 to 105 g / m ² ), one output for 150 sheets, one multi-purpose – capable of operating with just one sheet of format up to A4, but significantly denser, up to 200 g/m ² . The mass of the printer does not exceed 7 kg, and it comes with a starter cartridge, designed to print 1,000 standard pages, and a starter photoconductor for 9,000 pages.

The Pantum P3010DW variant differs from the P3010D by having both an Ethernet network adapter, a built-in Wi-Fi module, and an NFC module, which makes it much easier to connect the printer to a laptop, smartphone or other wireless device, and it also has the ability to connect Airprint and Mopria. In addition, the device with the DW index is equipped with a small LCD display and related controls, which allows you to connect it to a local wireless network directly and use it offline.

Declared compatibility models P3010D/P3010DW with a range of operating systems: Windows from Server2003/XP and older, Mac OS 10.7-10.15, as well as several OS versions based on the Linux kernel – including Ubuntu (12.04 and later), Astra Linux, RED OS and ROSA. Considering that more and more computers with pre-installed import-substituting operating systems have recently appeared on the Russian market, including retail, the compatibility of the printer with them does not seem superfluous at all.

Finally, traditionally for Pantum devices, the printers in question are offered a wide range of consumables: a photoconductor with a resource of 30 thousand pages, toner cartridges for 3 and 6 thousand pages, as well as refill kits with the corresponding chips. This, perhaps, is all that is really necessary for printing in a small / home or medium office, and overpaying for excess functionality in the current economic realities is, right, completely unnecessary.

We thank ASBIS LLC (the official distributor of Pantum products in the Russian Federation) for the equipment provided for the test.