Canon recently introduced the new MegaTank Pixma G4280 all-in-one, a low-cost inkjet tank printer that refills with bottles instead of cartridges. That means ink lasts much longer and costs significantly less.

Price isn’t the only important consideration when you’re shopping for the best printer. I went hands-on with the MegaTank Pixma G4280 to test print quality and speed, make copies, and scan photos to check out the automatic document feeder (ADF) and flatbed scanner.

Specs

Design

The MegaTank Pixma G4280 is very compact for an all-in-one printer with an ADF. The footprint is 16.4 inches by 14.3 inches and it stands just 8.4 inches high. The weight is 16.5 pounds, so it’s easy to unbox and move around.

The lightly textured body in off-white works well in a home office and every corner is rounded, softening the appearance. It’s a tank printer, so the ink levels are visible at a glance. The black tank is on the left side of the printer, with cyan, magenta, and yellow on the right.

The adjustable central control panel tilts up 45 degrees for easy viewing while standing or seated. Canon gave the MegaTank Pixma G4280 a 2.7-inch color touchscreen for easy access to menus. The controls also include buttons to make monochrome or color copies with one touch.

The main paper tray is in the back and holds 100 sheets. The ADF can handles 35 pages at a time. Overall, it’s a nice design, but paper capacity could be larger.

Printing performance

The Canon MegaTank Pixma G4280 is fast for short documents, completing the first page in about seven seconds. Inkjet printers don’t have to warm up before starting, so they can beat laser printers in a sprint.

For longer print jobs, I felt the slowdown. Monochrome prints have a maximum speed of 11 pages per minute (ppm) and color manages just 6 ppm.

A faster inkjet tank like Epson’s EcoTank ET-3850 (16 ppm) or EcoTank Pro ET-5850 (25 ppm) cost more upfront, but offer economical printing without having to wait as long for the prints and copies.

That said, color and black-and-white documents look professional, and the MegaTank Pixma G4280 supports borderless printing. Fine lines and small print are sharp and easy to read.

Photo quality is good on glossy paper, but contrast is a little low. That problem is more obvious on plain paper where blacks look gray.

With tinkering, it’s possible to improve picture quality. For example, selecting Photo Matte as the paper type improves plain paper photo quality.

There are better photo printers out there, and some are quite affordable.

Special features

There’s an option for duplex in copy settings, but the printer has what Canon calls semi-auto, which means I had to manually reinsert each sheet to complete the scan. It works, but takes time.

If you need to copy double-sided documents often, Canon’s Maxify GX2020 costs more, but the full-duplex capability will save you a huge amount of time.

The copy quality is good and relatively fast for a slow printer. There are options to reduce, enlarge, and copy multiple pages to a single sheet, saving paper costs.

The flatbed scanner captures up to 600 dots per inch (dpi), which is good enough in most cases. For photos and negatives, you might want a dedicated scanner to maintain maximum resolution.

Software and compatibility

Installing the MegaTank Pixma G4280 took about 15 minutes and was quite simple. I plugged in power, scanned the QR code on the printer’s screen to get the app, and pressed the link button to connect Wi-Fi. There’s a USB-B port if you prefer to use a wired connection to a computer.

Canon ships the MegaTank Pixma G4280 with four full ink bottles, including a large supply of cyan, magenta, and yellow, along with a double-sized container of black. The box also contained replaceable black and color printheads.

Everything was clearly marked. I installed the printheads and filled the ink tanks in about two minutes. The printer alerted me that the initial ink priming takes about seven minutes, so I could be productive elsewhere instead of waiting for it to finish.

Like most major brands, Canon printers are easy to connect to Windows PCs and Macs. The Canon Print app allows printing and scanning from mobile devices and Chromebooks.

Price

Canon’s list price for the MegaTank Pixma G4280 is $280, but the printer is often available for $230. The low upfront price might catch your eye, but the real value is in the ink, which Canon estimates is equal to about $1,000 worth of ink cartridges.

The included bottles hold enough ink to last up to two years, equivalent to 30 black (PG-260) and color (CL-261) cartridges. That’s the type used in the Canon’s budget-priced Pixma TR7020a inkjet printer.

With full tanks, the MegaTank Pixma G4280 can print up to 6,000 monochrome pages and 7,700 color pages. Based on current ink prices, that means each color document costs about five-tenths of a cent per page, while black ink costs drop to two-tenths of a cent per page.

Is the Canon MegaTank Pixma G4280 worth it?

Canon’s MegaTank Pixma G4280 is inexpensive for an inkjet tank printer, but there are trade-offs to keep the cost that low. It’s slower than cartridge-based inkjets and laser printers and has limited 100-sheet paper capacity. The semi-auto duplex ADF works, but is slow and requires your presence through the entire process.

However, if you aren’t in a hurry, the MegaTank Pixma G4280 minimizes ink costs. It handles color document copies and prints nicely. Glossy photo prints also look good.

All in all, though, there are better all-in-one printers with full-duplex ADFs, and you can save you money on specialty paper costs by choosing the best photo printers, which can print with good quality on plain paper.

That means Canon’s MegaTank Pixma G4280 could work well in a home office where you aren’t sharing the printer with co-workers, but it’s compromises make it harder to recommend for its intended audience.