Customer Ratings & Reviews

REVIEW Canon - PIXMA MegaTank G5020 Wireless Printer Best Buy Tech Insider Network Review Program SUMMARY: Great Dual Side Prints, Hard to Setup, Mediocre Photos UNBOXING IMPRESSION: Easy to unbox, simple packaging. Extra included ink is fantastic. SETTING UP (Learn from my mistakes): I am an IT professional. If you are not very computer literate, then get someone with IT experience to help. This is the most complicated printer I’ve tried to install in ages. Printheads: I found the initial installation of the print heads, somewhat confusing and the pictures were not that much of a help. Once I stopped looking at the directions and went with intuition it went much better. It did not help that some of the pages were getting stuck together. Ink: Fun pouring in the ink bottles. Drivers and Network: THE RIGHT WAY - Go to your app store on your phone. Search for PIXMA and install the phone app and follow the instructions. Once the printer is installed from your phone app, tell windows to add a printer and let it download a driver that works. THE WRONG WAY – Go to the Canon website, search for G5020 install the suggested G series driver (this is the wrong one and won’t work and won’t complete the install for USB, Network, or WiFi). Turns out this is the wrong driver entirely, I wasted about 2 hours here. If you decide to load from the Canon site, then make sure it is the G5020 driver. Trust me, just let windows auto discover it. Once you get it installed and available on the network, you can use a web browser to get to the printer directly. Switch to admin mode (password is serial#) and change settings like default time out (sleep mode) and more. There are some good utilities on the Canon Website to help you with this. One tip is that you can’t switch from LAN to WiFi without rebooting the printer. What this means for example, is that you can’t hard code an IP address for the LAN from WiFi or USB. First you have to use DHCP, figure out the address, then you can hard code the IP. EASE OF USE: Paper, Ink, Front and Rear guides are all very easy to use. I only have one big complaint. The LCD panel on the printer is not backlit. It is impossible to read without a flashlight. That is just crazy for a modern and not cheap printer. For about a penny more they could have made this backlit. Another note is that I think the rear paper page up indicator is reverse. OVERALL PERFORMANCE: The print quality is fast and fantastic. The fact that it does double sided printing is fantastic. The colors are clean and sharp. Unfortunately, the photos are only average. They are not bad, but even on photo paper they are a little washed out. The bad LCD is unforgivable, but minor once everything is all set up it does not matter. CONCLUSION: I gave up on ink jets about 15 years ago. When I did use them, I only used and recommended Canon. I gave up after spending a ton on ink, I switch to lasers. With enough included ink to print nearly 20,000 pages, this printer may have changed my mind. Time will tell how long the print heads will last, if they clog, etc. So far for this past month, this has been my everyday printer, and my laser is mostly idle, unless I need waterproof prints.

I was tired of running out of ink so quickly with every printer I've own, even though I would purchase the XL tanks. Refills were expensive, manually refilling tanks was messy. We would run out of ink with no warnings which was super inconvenient. I wanted to try out this PIXMA MegaTank because of the large ink capacity and the fact that I could view the actual ink tank levels from outside of the machine. Initial ink fill was very easy. We even got extra ink with our purchase. It's been over a year and we haven't needed to refill any colors yet. Prints come out clear and vivid and zero smudging. I love the 2 paper trays. Initially I didn't see the point but I realized that I can keep specialty paper in one tray and regular paper in the other tray at all times and never need to switch back and forth. It is easy to select which tray you want to print from on your print selection screen-same place you select quantity and quality. Currently I keep our really nice 24# paper in one tray and we are using the other tray for our old paper stock that isn't as good as quality. So if something is being printed that isn't important like our grocery shopping list or coupon, then I select the tray with the lesser quality paper. We have only had one paper jam, not sure what caused it. On every printer I've ever owned frequent jams were a part of life. Not so on this PIXMA. We have a few cons with this PIXMA. It's expensive. And after having it for over a year I don't feel like it justifies the price it sells for. Wait for a good sale. The display is very hard to read. It is not backlit. I was not aware of this, all of my previous printers had a backlit display and especially as this was a newer machine I just assumed it would also be. The angle the screen is at makes it very difficult to read unless you are at eye level. Again, being a newer and expensive machine I would expect they have had the display be tilt-able as my older machines had been. Our original placement of this printer had been on a low shelf on our desk. We had to sit on the floor and use a flashlight to read the screen. We've since moved it to our kitchen counter, it's higher up and in a brightly lit room. Setting this printer up to our network was a nightmare. We could not get it to connect. The instructions did not mesh with the prompts we would get. Canon tech support was not able to get it connected, even with workarounds. Eventually I found that I could print with my phone using Apple AirPrint. That meant that everyone needed to email their documents from their computers to my phone, very inconvenient. Or they could bring the printer to their rooms and wire it to their desktop when they needed to print. Even then it didn't always work. I had a tech guy at my house installing a new router and mesh units and he unsuccessfully spent about 30 minutes trying to get this printer on our network. Several months after getting this printer I worked with Canon support again, still no go. They said it must be a problem with my network. Even though we could get our old Canon PIXMA online to work wirelessly. Then I got a Mac and found that I could use Apple's AirPrint and there was a Mac printer setting allowing me to share the printer on my network!! So if any of you run into the problem I had and you have an Apple computer try going into settings, printers and scanners. Select the printer and then check the box to share this printer on the network. Then go into sharing preferences and make sure that printer sharing is checked and the PIXMA printer is selected. Under users select everyone and set it to can print. Hopefully that will work for you also. A bonus of doing it this way is that if you have a visitor over and they connect to your wifi they will be able to print.

I have used a large variety of Inkjet printers over the years, from budget friendly to high end. I was really excited when Canon announced this printer to their lineup. * Setup: It took me approximately 20 minutes to setup the printer from unboxing to printing the first test sheet. The instructions are easy to follow. I was able to connect it to my phone through the Canon App as well as to my desktop computer over a wireless connection. I have not experienced any connectivity errors. * Refillable ink tank: This is probably one of the best features of this printer. Instead of having to go to the store after printing on average 100-500 pages with your current printer (depending on the size of ink cartridge), you will now be able to print up to 6000-7000 pages before refilling the ink tanks! That is beyond impressive. Even better? The refillable bottles are significantly cheaper compared to ink cartridges. If you do any volume of printing and want to maintain the option of color, this is a no-brainer. Lastly, refilling the ink tanks is fast and easy. Simply lift the tab above each ink tank, slide the correct ink bottle over the hub and fill. * Fast and versatile: My previous printer in the same price tier took forever to print. It was a very tedious process. A single page could take 30-60 seconds. In comparison, the PIXMA MegaTank is FAST and handled everything without slowing down or jamming. Switching between trays is a breeze. I printed 115 menus for my wedding on 80 lb card stock without having to feed single sheets. The best part? I did not experience a single jam! There are not many printers that are able to do this. I highly recommend this printer. If you are looking for the high end printer at a budget friendly price then look no further. You will not regret this purchase.

It is quite practical in a sense of newly introduced filling the cartridges with the ink bottle. Filling doesn't take great care and simple. Then for this particular model G5020, it is meant to use only for printing purpose, any kind with relatively good printing quality and speed. But personally I see it better use for text based printing. From setting up aspect, it took about 10 min from out of box process to between filling cartridge and setting wifi, and test print page. Then once setup, it become available for print option in another device like notebook connected to same network. What is feels bit downside that doesn't make perfect are: 1. Setting WiFi require user to download app on you phone/tablet. It has the kind of setting used by Internet of Things devices for smart home. Previous model would have ability to setup directly from the printer. So, one more app. 2. Its size and esthetic is literally big black box, and material is not shiny plastic as would be in other line of Canon printers. 3. Price of bottle for refill personally seems bit not aligned with the idea of saving as colored bottle cost $12, times three color makes $36; for black ink refill bottle is $18. That spending around $54 + tax. Although Canon states "...an ink savings of $1,175 Print up to 6,000 black text pages or up to 7,700 vivid color pages..", then unless user has to refill around twice a year, doesn't feel to add up in economically. Naturally this calc will depend on each use case and respective point of view. 4. Printer has a display, that is tiny and hard to ready. It looks like reuse of matrix printer of early days of printer history. It displays icon for WiFI connective, and status, but hard to read. Based on above description the rating being given, but still recommendable as meet its purpose in general. In the attached photo shows inside out and the bottle of ink

I was extremely tired of my old printer. It is an HP and everything everyone says is true...they ROB you on the ink. We started only buying black ink to print documents and those would not even last a few months. And that is with not many print jobs. So we opted for this Canon printer that looked promising. The first thing you do is unpack and remove about 10 pieces of protective tape and one bracket. These all hold everything in place. No big deal. Then you insert 2 ink cartridges. I thought there was ink in them but then i kept reading the manual. The manual is very easy to follow by the way. After loading the cartridges, you find out that they are actually empty. You have to fill storage tanks in the machine with ink bottles that they give you. There are 3 big bottles of black ink and 3 smaller bottles for the color ink. It was pretty cool actually. You would think filling ink tanks would be messy but they have made it pretty "idiot proof". I was ready to go in a matter of minutes. You then power on the machine and run a quick calibration. It then prompts you to setup the network. This is where disaster usually strikes. But this was not the case. You visit a website and select the setup option. You then select your product's model # which I was listed right on the box right next to where I was sitting.It then downloads and installs the software for your maching, searches for your network, and you log on. That's it. You are ready to print. I then decided to print out a quick picture of my little Walter. I was not immediately impressed. The photo was very light and unimpressive. I decided to check those settings again. I changed the quality in the printing properties and then bingo! The photo came out perfect. That was all I needed to claim this printer a winner! It sent both docs to the printer very fast and they both printed very quick. I have absolutely no complaints. The regular black and white document it prints out after you setup was also rock solid, which should have. I have been having the family print out anything they need now for the past few weeks and so far the ink is holding up and there have no issues with connectivity or with print quality. Love it!

When looking into getting a print that uses ink bottles instead of cartridges, I was nervous. I assumed that this printer would be a major hassle setting up and that the ink itself would probably be difficult to manage and get all over the place. I was, thankfully, totally wrong! The included manual is super easy to follow and each step of the setup was super smooth. The ink bottles and the printer have a way of interfacing where the ink does not begin pouring out of the bottle until the spout of the bottle is fully locked and pushed down onto the printer fully. The WIFI connection using the Canon download from their website made setup really easy too. Further more, this printer prints quickly and with the extra included TWO black ink bottles, I am dubious as to when I will next need a refill of ink for this printer. Overall, for someone who needs a straight up printer without scanning abilities and just needs to print lots of quality documents, fast, and in color when needed, I would say a printer like this takes the cake. Definitely 5 stars!

I own other Canon products and have been please with them. This is no different. Pros Huge ink capacity Multi feed options Multi connection possibilities (with caveats) Great cloud printing capabilities I used Google cloud print Print quality on photo printer is really good. Cons Hardwired via USB printing could not work with photo printing even after all drivers and updates were done You can only pick between wireless connection or LAN CAT5 connection. You can't do both. Took about 2 hours to fully set up out of box and ready to print. If you can look beyond the cons this is a great printer. If you can't then at least you know it's strengths.

Finally -- an inkjet printer that isn't designed to rob you with outrageously priced ink supplies. It was actually a pleasure to pour in the ink and watch the tanks fill up, knowing how much more ink is in there than the puny, sponge-filled cartridges every non-tank inkjet uses. And the clear tanks allow you to see how much ink you really have left instead of relying on an approximation that cartridge-based printers use and often get wrong. The text is crisp and dark. The photos are vivid. The speed is excellent. It has a generous paper capacity. Canon includes TWO extra huge bottles of black ink, which is enough for 12,000 pages of black text (according to Canon). I'm very impressed they included that. Overall, I am super-pleased with this printer. I no longer have to cross my fingers that my ink won't run out when I print another photo. Negatives: The setup documentation asks you to go through all sorts of hoops. I ignored that and instead just used the printer's front panel to select my Wi-Fi network and entered the password. After that, both my Mac and my PC saw the printer and loaded the necessary drivers. This also avoided loading a bunch of unnecessary Canon software that going to their website, per the instructions, would install, and greatly simplified an otherwise complicated setup. The LCD has no backlight, so it's hard to read unless the printer is sitting in a really well-lit area. This is pretty minor, though, since after installation, you really don't need to look at the LCD for much.

I have not really had this printer long enough to give a comprehensive review. But so far it has not been bad. I did take an extensive amount of time to install. It turns itself off so we have to make sure it is on before we print or we will get a pop error window telling is that the printer is not on.

Bought for the tank system as I was tired of buying cartridges. It was easy to fill and set up wirelessly. It is great for printing color pictures. It is a bit slow printing text documents in B&W. The unit should have a scanner for the price paid.

Decent photo printer for the price but my printer receive damage may for home photo print

I would love to give this printer a higher review, but it is seriously flawed with respect to speed and for the fact that its display is not back lit. PROS: This printer is very economical in ink usage. I used it to print 140 home produced Holiday Greeting cards, in addition to a moderate volume of incidental print jobs. It is still over half full in all ink tanks. Impressed. The color quality of the greetings cards was acceptable, particularly for a general purpose inkjet printer, but it was not as vivid as I had been getting from a comparable printer of a different brand. So far (five months), I have had no technical issues. CONS: NO BACK LIGHT IN DISPLAY!!! This is significant and would have been a deal breaker had I not been in great need of a printer. I keep a flashlight nearby so I can read the frequent messages in the display. Print quality is not particularly sharp or vivid, so everything is a bit washed out regardless of paper quality or print settings or whether printing text, graphics, or color. SLOW for anything but text. Also, it spends an inordinate amount of time making internal noises. COMMENTS-CONCLUSIONS-RECOMMENDATIONS: I like the mega-tank concept, and the system for filling the tanks is simple and mess-free. This printer is economical to use but does not provide the overall quality of output I have come to expect from Canon. The display, which is needed frequently in order to make adjustments, is NOT BACK LIT. That is an inexcusable design flaw (cheap) by Canon. I would not recommend this printer based on print quality, the lack of a back lit display, and being super slow with color. However, it has worked without technical issue since I got it, and It filled an immediate need I had at the end of last year. However, I am still looking and will probably give this printer to one of the

I am really enjoying the Canon MegaTank G5020. I had an HP printer that took ink cartridges before. My HP had an issue with the printhead and I needed a replacement printer. I was interested in a tank printer to get away from cartridges. Canon had the best price to performance value. I have tested the printer with some photo prints and am pretty happy with the quality. I really like the ink because it holds up under my skin oils. I have had issues with photo prints spearing due to touching the ink after it has dried. I hooked the printer up using Ethernet and am happy for the option.

Good printer for the price I paid. Easy to set-up. Prints nicely. Love how it has automatic double sided print. Only downfall is pictures have to be pri ted through top feeder.

This is the first printer that I get that prints really good on photo paper. All the other printers I’ve owned shows the lines like the printer is letting you know that it prints in sections. Very simple to use and the app is helpful on iPhone and iPads. Don’t have a scanner in case anyone is wondering. I don’t need it but if you need it, this printer won’t have a scanner. Literally read and follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to start printing in no time.

Ideal for everyday printing tasks. However, its photo printing capabilities fall short of expectations. Despite producing acceptable photos, the color accuracy and vibrancy are lacking compared to dedicated photo printers. If your primary need is high-quality photo prints, you might want to explore other options.

Great Printer! Was looking for a MegaTank printer for my home office and found this at a good price. Comes with 6 bottles that completely fill up each tank.

Works great. I have used Canon Pixma for years. They are a great printer. The print quality is excellent.

Good quality. This printer will save you lots of ink. I use it for my stationery shop. Great printer

Waited until I had it a while before I posted a review. Love this it’s efficient and prints great on every paper I’ve tried so far.