Canon G7020 Review

If you’re looking for one of the best printers out there for both home and office, here comes the Canon G7020 review.

The Canon G7020 is both a paper monster and an ink monster, and if you want to learn more about inkjet printers, such as the G7020, go ahead and read our article on laser vs inkjet printers.

What it is

To describe it succinctly, the G7020 is a cartridgeless multifunction inkjet printer, and by that we mean this monster uses bulk ink. Obviously, this translates into low operating costs, i.e. low cost per copy, and that’s a good thing if you’re not ready to spend a lot of money on this stuff.

Another cool thing about the Canon G7020 is that it’s very affordable for a wireless supertank/megatank printer; on top of printing, you also get a copier, a scanner, a fax machine (who uses that anymore?), and ADF with mobile printing.

Before you ask, ADF means automatic document feeder, and it’s a nice feature to have printers, photocopiers, fax machines or scanners wherein a stack of paper put into the machine and is then automatically fed through it, allowing the user to print, scan or copy without having to manually place each page into the machine.

Basically, this beast feeds itself paper, and that’s awesome, especially in a busy/office-like environment.

Should you buy it?

Now, if you don’t have enough money to get a fancy (and crazy expensive) color laser printer, the G7020 can make for a solid alternative, delivering low running costs and high productivity. So, if you’re trying to dig the internet for the best printer for home/office and your budget is less than five hundred bucks, just go for it.

Why size matters

The Canon G7020 is a stylish multipurpose printer which is an excellent alternative to people who regard small AIO printers as not having enough power for medium to large print volume, yet opting for bulky and expensive office printers is too much. However, the Canon G7020 has it where it counts, in the size department respectively, as it features a huge ink reservoir that has enough juice for all your printing needs, that if you’re not Guttenberg.

Solid Build Quality Meets Compact Design

This Canon printer is the definition of the phrase “design matters”. So, if you care at least a bit about interior design, choosing a printer that matches your working environment is important, and here Canon did a great job with the G7020.

Basically, the printer looks as professional as an iMac, featuring a full-black casing that will blend easily with your interior, hence there’s no issue with redecorating your desk to match your new Canon machine.

Also, build quality is solid, full plastic obviously, but high quality; the machine measures 9.1 inches high by 15.9 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep and weighs a respectable 21 pounds.

You know that we love heavy gear, because heavy is good, heavy is reliable, etc. However, keep in mind that if your desktop is limited in terms of real-estate, you might want to find a separate place for this printer, or buy another desk, why not?

The G7020 sports a tiny 1.8’’ monochrome display, which looks vintage, as in like a vintage Casio calculator. On top of that, you’ll get a control panel with various buttons (including numerical) that allow you to configure how the machine operates and what not.

The ADF gizmo is located on top, and since you have an automatic document feeder, it’s pretty obvious that the machine features automatic duplexing for your efficiency. On the back, you’ll find an extendable input tray for higher input capacity.

The huge ink reservoir is placed on the front (a smart touch by the way) for easy access.

A Mega-Beefy MegaTank

Canon is betting big on bulk ink printers, and this particular model features the company’s MegaTank technology for high productivity/low cost/low maintenance. This printer is perfectly capable of scanning, making copies, sending faxes and anything in between, including making configuration changes on the fly, and as for paper handling, the ADF can hold 350 plain paper sheets. On top of that, you can stick 20 snapshot-size sheets of premium photo paper inside the main drawer via a small insert.

Tech Stuff

The Canon G7020 comes rated at 5000 prints per month; more precisely, this is its official duty cycle. Even if this is not exactly what you may call a work horse, it’s still pretty good for a $300ish printer.

Speaking of tech stuff, the printer features the company’s FINE inkjet technology with 1792 nozzle configuration for detailed printing, and supports up to 4800 x 1200 dpi print resolution, which makes it ideal for both printing detailed color images or documents that require sharp and crisp black text.

Obviously, you can print graphics and docs, as well as illustrations and photos, including borderless printing 4 inches by 6 inches for creative projects or your private albums. The copier machine can handle up to 99 copies, which is pretty good, and you’ll get a plethora of copying features, such as auto exposure, borderless copy manual duplex copy and collation copy.

The scanner thing is equally impressive, as it features 1200 x 2400 dpi resolutions for clear documents on screen on the flatbed scanner, and supports up to 8.5 inches by 11.7 inches, not to mention cool features such as scan to PC, auto scan mode, multi-page PDF auto, wireless scanning, scan to Canon PRINT app, and document removal reminder.

The fax feature is somehow obsolete now, but it’s nice to have it anyway, and it comes with all sorts of goodies, including caller rejection, dial search, duplex printing, and memory transmission, with a 3 second transmission speed and a memory capacity of 50 pages.

The printer is rated at 13 ppm/pages per minute before you ask, which is not great, not terrible. Without boring you too much with specs, you must learn that this printer has relatively low speed, especially for color and duplex printing.

Output quality

Overall quality is quite good, but not fantastic as expected from a relatively affordable printer. Graphics and gradients are well printed, text is sharp and clear, and when it comes to color printing, there’s no competition with laser printers, obviously. However, for photo printing, the G7020 does a great job for what it is, delivering nice details and being quite dependable for creative projects and the like.

We would say that output quality is about average for a family-oriented inkjet.

Refillable Ink

This Canon printer uses refillable ink wells, and since it was designed this way, the refilling process is easy and clean. The wells open from the top, with lids that click into place for secure closure, they’re easy to open and you can refill them on the fly, in the middle of the job, if required. In this regard, the G7020 is awesome, and due to its huge reservoir, you need not worry about running out of ink.

The black ink well is large enough for up to 6k pages, and the CYK color ink wells can last for up to 7,700 pages (depending on density, obviously).

Since we’re talking refillable ink wells, this printer will save you a lot of money compared to cartridges. Another cool thing is that you’ll get a full set of CYK ink and 3 black bottles, which means you have enough ammo to print thousands of pages before having to spend money in refills. Printing costs are less than a penny per page, i.e. 0.3 cents for monochrome and 0.9 for color prints.

Frankly, I don’t think it can get lower than that.

Connectivity and Mobile App

The Canon G7020 offers quite a lot of connectivity options, in order to improve your printing experience. Standard connectivity includes USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi direct and Wi-Fi, but if you hook up the printer with your smartphone via the dedicated app, you’ll get mobile printing through Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Wireless PictBridge, Canon PRINT app, and Mopria.

The printing software delivered with the machine includes Canon Easy-PhotoPrint Editor and PosterArtist Lite, which are pretty good for editing pics before printing. Also, the Canon PRINT Inkjet/SELPHY app enables you to perform setup and operations from your tabet or smartphone, or even remote management of your printer queue.

You can even print docs and photos from social media via the app, or from shared documents sites, like Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive.

Bottom line, the Canon PIXMA G7020 is an efficient and highly innovative multi-purpose printer, with solid features and can print from just about any online service, which makes it capable of handling just about anyone’s needs.