Canon PIXMA G5020 Wireless MegaTank Single Function SuperTank Printer | Mobile & Auto 2-Sided Printing

**Review of the Canon PIXMA G5020 MegaTank Printer** I've been using the Canon PIXMA G5020 MegaTank Printer for a bit now, and I’m really impressed! The MegaTank system is a game-changer—no more running out of ink every few weeks. The refillable tanks hold a ton of ink, so I don’t have to worry about replacing them constantly. The printer’s fast and the print quality is great, with sharp text and vibrant colors. It’s also super easy to set up and connect wirelessly to my devices. The only thing to note is that it’s a single-function printer, so it doesn’t do scanning or copying. But if you just need a reliable, cost-effective printer, this one’s a winner. Highly recommend if you’re tired of the hassle of ink cartridges!

This is honestly the best printer I've ever owned. I have an Epson ET-2800 at work (an ink tank printer), and this Canon blows it out of the water. My kid prints hundred of photo quality pictures on 8½" x 11", & I'm just now replacing the ink for the 2nd time. If you have a cartridge printer, you're getting ripped off. I've have many. It would cost me over $150 per month at this point based on what my child prints. I've had printer for almost 4 years now. 1 thing that I see people complain about is flushing the nozzles on the printer, which wastes a lot of ink. My Epson at work doesn't do that. But I have to manually clean the nozzles out in the settings constantly. The printer doesn't print b&w pictures out fast. But if that's what you want, get a laser printer. & people complain about the front display... Turn the light on. This printer isn't perfect. But if you figure out its quirks, it's a great printer built with a admirable Canon quality. This is one of my pieces of PC hardware that I really appreciate.

Setting this up was difficult - there was inadequate customer support. I was very polite because I hoped someone along the way could fix my issue - the power cord plug did not fit at the printer connection. I first ordered a replacement cord, thinking I had a defective cord. When the second cord also did not fit, I called customer support to make sure I'd ordered the correct cord. That was a trip into despair. Finally, since I had 2 power cords, and neither would fit into the space provided (but the connection part looked like a fit), I got a knife and shaved the sides off the plug until I'd shaved enough plastic off that i could push the plug into place. That worked. A simple fix that not one of the 11 different tech support people with whom I spoke even thought of. None of them believed me when I said the plug did not fit into the space in the back of hte printer - they all thought it was my personal error. It wasn't. The outside part of the plug actually literally genuinely was too big to fit into the space provided. After I fixed the plug all on my own (well, my pocket knife was very useful here, so shout out to Opinel!), the rest of the set-up was easy enough. Everything worked fine. I was happy with the device. It printed lovely pages. The error messages were clear and easily fixed (out of paper, paper jam were the 2 most common messages). Canon also spams you with "join this group" and "be a good customer, buy this thing" emails. i've opted out of the email multiple times, and still get spammed by them. This behavior tells me they know their products have become inferior. I didn't know just how inferior. I ran the suggested maintenance to keep the ink nozzles clear and unclogged. I purchased this printer in August of 2023. In July 2024, the color ink nozzles started clogging despite the suggested maintenance. calls to tech support resulted in no help. Two of them said the printer was out of warranty, even though it was not. One of them finally, reluctantly, told me I could purchase replacement nozzles - not ideal, but workable except - Canon no longer SELLS the nozzles for this printer. Finding replacement nozzles was a journey but I managed to find some. I have been procrastinating putting the new nozzles in. If these off-brand nozzles work, I will update this review. UPDATE (9/29/24) I installed the off-brand printer head nozzles. The color now works, but the black printer head stopped working. I finally located and installed the black printer head nozzle, and the color printer head nozzles stopped working. I'm now out over $100 trying to get this device to print. I just want to say, if Canon is still selling this printer (and they are), then they should provide authentic replacement parts. If I had genuine Canon parts instead of having to hunt for and buy off-brand parts, maybe I wouldn't be having these issues. If you're not techie minded, this is not the printer for you. It requires a lot of maintenance and a lot of tinkering to keep it functioning on the hardware side. A lot of rigging and McGyvering goes into using it. Pick a different printer. Canon used to be a name one could rely on for quality. I don't know what changed, but from manufacturing to tech support, they've lost that edge of well-made they once had. The Canon name now means "inferior". Pick a different brand. Pick a different printer. Don't buy Canon.

I purchased this single-function printer because I have a super high end scanner that is fast as blazes. So I was looking for an economical printer for color prints that also included an automatic duplexing feature. This fit the bill and was reasonably priced. Installation was pretty simple, I followed the internet-suggested method of installing from my Android phone. That went pretty well. But the results were less than great. The printer connected wirelessly through a 2-g connection and was painfully slow in printing. I purchased a repeater for the internet to get to higher transmission speeds (hopefully) but ultimately gave up and went with a direct-to-computer USB install. That seemed to help a lot but also makes it less convenient for others to link wirelessly to the printer. I am testing out network availability for others in our small company but will likely just purchase more machines for both convenience and speed. Ink use has seemingly been great! We print most everything in color and with automatic duplexing, this seems to be the most economical approach available. Print quality is pretty good though color saturation seems less than with the HP 8620 this unit replaces. Plus the HP would knock out prints super fast, much faster than this new Canon, and I miss that production capability from the prior machine. I will up date this report as time bears out how fast this Canon G5020 spits out copies and also how the printhead holds up. My HP glided through 50,000 copies without a hitch, then "went on vacation". I'm hoping the printhead on this Canon does as well or better. Let's see how it works out!

I am a high school teacher and print a lot at home, and this printer seems to have done the job well. It's not terribly fast, but it makes up for this with large ink capacity and quality prints. It only took about 25 minutes to set up and was easy to connect. The ink and printheads were not too challenging to set up, and there are videos and a manual which show step-by-step how to install them. I'd recommend this over any inkjet printer if you don't want to burn a hole in your pocket. The ink is cheap, and even after hundreds of printed worksheets, I still don't need to even think about replacing the ink.

January 2021 Update - just over a year after purchase, almost 6k pages. About 20% black remaining on the first of 2 included bottles. Roughly 50% Cyan, 60% Magenta and Yellow remain. Averaging about 15 pages per day. A few minor paper jams to report. My only complaint about this printer is the lack of a backlight on the LCD. June 2020 Update - 3 months and almost 2,000 pages later I still have ~70% or more black plus another bottle that came with the printer. About 80% Cyan, and Magenta / Yellow are both still about 90%. Amazing. No issues to report in daily light personal usage (avg 22 pages / day). Original Review ------------------ If you are looking to lower your print costs, add to cart. I spent over $500 on crappy little ink cartridges for a $150 printer in the 18 months prior to this purchase. Infuriated, I invested in this G5020 in January of 2020. In the nearly 2 months since, my printing needs have not slowed but I still have about 85% of the original ink fill, PLUS 2 more bottles of black ink. This purchase will easily pay for itself in less than a year. Also, it is nice to find a decent quality printer without having to pay for all the other "features" - scanner, fax... that's what we have smart phones for, right?! The build quality is nice, the print quality is good enough for office / school use (don't expect your pictures to look amazing on standard or even special ink-jet paper, though I haven't tried a test at max settings on actual photo paper). Print speeds are a bit on the slow side, but who cares. Wireless setup was straightforward and is reliable. Highly recommended. This is only the second product review I've bothered with on Amazon. Happy customer.

I waited to write this review until I'd had a chance to really give this machine a run for it's money. I print a lot of graphics and wanted a printer that wasn't going to bankrupt me by buying ink but I also wanted a top quality machine. My friends all have a different brand of megatank printers and I decided to be the odd duck out and try this brand as I have favored Canon in the past for vivid photo printouts. When using photo coated papers this prints out beautiful vibrant images for cards, print and cut projects, etc. If using plain copy paper it has a faded look to it as expected but it's still very pretty. I find as long as I'm not printing a lot or red I don't notice a huge difference. It's great for printing stationery on "normal print" I do prefer the normal print to the "best" or "photo" print. I have printed a ton of projects off, stationery, photos, and the ink is about half way now. I purchased refill ink when I purchased the printer so I was covered in case it used more ink than it said it would. I have used cardstock up to 110 lbs using the rear tray and it goes through effortlessly. This printer will also print to the edge full size 8.5 x 11 which is an added bonus since I print off journal covers. It prints out on sticker papers of various thickness without effort. I had my first paper jam using label paper that curled up on the corner and got caught. This is by far the easiest machine to ever fix a paper jam in. You lift the cover and can reach right in to pull it out. No taking back covers off and using a flashlight and tweezers to fix. I would highly recommend this printer if you are looking to save money on ink and still want a great print out. Invest in the proper paper and you won't be disappointed.

Just spent a couple of hours reading, researching and configuring the G5020 printer. No printing except for a series of test pages. A number of purchasers have written negatively about the installation instructions and I agree they could be better. The following may help. Download the on-line PDF manual, it will help, it contains more information than provided. It should be included in the installation CD (if it was, I couldn't find it). Also, don't use the installation CD as the install works off the Canon web site files. DO NOT CONNECT YOUR COMPUTER TO THE PRINTER, DO NOT POWER IT UP UNTIL YOU HAVE FOLLOWED ALL OF THE STEPS OUTLINED IN THE INSTRUCTIONS. Done correctly, a physical connection isn't required if you use the WiFi procedure. There's an alternate hard connection method available in the installation instructions. The issue is making sure that you use the "Manual" option to set up the wireless connection. For this, you must use the printer's control panel which has a small monochrome LCD screen and difficult to see, it isn't backlit or angled, I resorted to a flashlight to see the tiny screen. Scrolling through the selections eventually gets you to the router detection, printer identified it and prompted the router password input (again clunky interface). A successful connection allows detection of the printer via the Windows 10 Settings. It takes time for Windows to gather up required files. Installing the printer via WiFi on two other Windows machines was quick and all printed test pages, no issues. The printer comes with three large black ink bottles, so three full fill-ups, plus 3 bottles of the required colored inks, they filled their corresponding tanks. Take it slow filling the tanks to avoid spillage or confusing the inks. There is a maintenance utility that for some reason isn't included in the installation software; that needs to be downloaded separately, it allows control of some functions via computer instead of the printer control panel. I did a lot of research as to which printer to replace my old iP3000 (which inexplicably stopped working after a recent Windows update and couldn't be revived). I have a suspicion it was a forced retirement. The subscription ink scheme and the ink prices led me to this printer and it seems to be a logical and cheaper alternative. My rating is based only on the installation and setup and the deductions come from the counterintuitive install and the printer's control panel deficiencies. Should the printer functions as it should going forward, I would raise the rating to 4 stars.