The Pixma G7020 inkjet all-in-one delivers some of the lowest running costs available in a consumer printer, making it a great value for families and home offices.
A step up from the Editors’ Choice-winning Pixma G6020 MegaTank, Canon’s Pixma G7020 Wireless MegaTank All-in-One ($329.99) is a cartridge-less (bulk-ink) multifunction inkjet designed for printing and copying a few hundred pages per month in a home or small office. Like most lower-end bulk-ink models (Including Canon’s MegaTank, Epson’s EcoTank, and HP’s Smart Tank Plus brands), this one prints well, if a little slowly. And it churns out both black and color pages for under 1 cent each, making it a terrific value for those with moderate print and copy needs (say, between 300 and 500 pages a month). For the few extra bucks between the G6020’s and G7020’s purchase prices, the latter comes with an automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending multipage documents to the scanner without manual flipping, as well as a few other less notable features. They’re just enough to nudge the G6020 out and the G7020 in as our latest favorite entry-level color AIO printer for home offices. A Mega-Beefy MegaTank
As Epson (and later HP) did with its first few bulk-ink models, Canon designed its first MegaTank machines with somewhat effete feature sets, too-modest paper input capacities, and paltry volume ratings. In other words, while these printers delivered terrific low running costs, they were also dismally slow, low on productivity and convenience features, and not really suited for printing and copying more than 100 or so pages each month. And that, when you think about it, kind of defeats the purpose of purchasing a printer with very low per-page operating costs.
But just as Epson has done with its EcoTank brand, Canon’s latest round of MegaTank models, while they still deliver the same low per-page costs, are much beefier and more robust than their predecessors. Take, say, the Pixma G4210, which, for about the same price as today’s G7020, holds less than half the amount of paper and comes with markedly fewer features.
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But we’ll get to that. Let’s start with the basics. Measuring 9.4 by 14.7 by 16 inches (HWD) and weighing 17.8 pounds, the G7020 is almost, sans the ADF mentioned earlier, identical in size and girth to the G6020 and slightly smaller than the G4210. Smaller and lighter still is HP’s Smart Tank Plus 651 Wireless All-in-One, that company’s sole bulk-ink AIO. Then, too, there’s Brother’s MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank All-in-One, a cartridge-based bulk-ink printer with specs similar to those of the Pixma G7020.
Making copies, scanning, sending faxes, making configuration changes, and all other walk-up tasks are handled from the G7020’s somewhat busy control panel. It consists of several navigation buttons for getting around in the drill-down menu system via a two-line monochrome LCD. In addition to the navigation buttons, you’ll find the typical Black, Color, Stop, Start, and other buttons for making copies, as well as a 10-key number pad for dialing fax numbers and other functions.
As for paper handling, the G7020 holds up to 350 plain paper sheets, split between a 250-sheet cassette up front and a 100-sheet tray that pulls up from the back of the chassis. Inside the main drawer, you’ll find a small insert for loading up to 20 snapshot-size sheets of premium photo paper or 10 number 10 envelopes, as well as several other paper types and sizes. These include (as with most Pixma-brand printers) Instagram’s square media formats in sizes ranging from 3.5 by 3.5 inches up to 5 by 5 inches. (The wide-format Pixma TS9520 and TS9521C models take square paper up to 12 by 12 inches.)
The Pixma G6020 offers an identical paper input configuration, while Epson’s WorkForce ST-4000 EcoTank Color MFP Supertank, a similarly configured bulk-ink AIO, holds only 250 sheets from one input source; the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 holds only 100 sheets and the Brother MFC-J805DW holds 150 sheets with a one-sheet override slot.
The G7020’s maximum monthly duty cycle is 5,000 prints, the same as the G6020, the Epson ST-4000, and the MFC-J805DW, while the Smart Tank Plus 651 maxes out at 1,000 pages.
