Canon MegaTank G3270 vs G3290: Pay the Step-Up or Pocket the Difference?

Updated June 18, 2026

Canon MegaTank G3270

VS

Canon MegaTank G3290

Look — for most buyers the G3290 wins this one, and not because it is cheaper to run. The Canon MegaTank G3270 and the MegaTank G3290 sit on the same Canon ladder: refillable bottle tanks, the same headline page yield, the same roughly two-years-of-ink pitch in the box. Whichever you choose, you have already walked out of the cartridge tax that drives most printer regret. So the question is never which one saves you more on ink — they save the same — but whether the dearer rung's extra hardware earns its price step, and for the G3290 it usually does.

The split is short and concrete. The G3290 prints on both sides by itself and drives from a color touchscreen; the G3270 flips pages by hand and runs off a small monochrome readout. That is most of the gap. The rest of this page is about whether those two upgrades — duplex and a real screen — are worth paying for, because on the cost math that decides most supertank buys, there is nothing to choose between them.

Canon MegaTank G3270

Canon MegaTank G3290

At a Glance

The ink math is a tie — both already won it

Here's the thing: the reason to read a MegaTank-versus-MegaTank comparison is not to find the cheaper printer to feed. They cost the same to feed. The expensive printer is the cartridge machine neither of these is.

Both escape cartridges by the identical route. Canon rates the G3270 to Print up to 6,000 black & white / 7,700 color pages using a single set of inks, and the G3290 carries the exact same rating — Print up to 6,000 black & white / 7,700 color pages using a single set of inks. Both ship with Up to 2 years of ink included in the box, the G3290 matching it with Up to 2 years of ink included. Same tanks, same bottles, same headline. RTINGS' cost-per-print and page-yield testing puts that bottle-fed bracket far below any cartridge printer, and we stage every brand yield claim against synthesized owner reports in our inkjet printers evidence hub.

So spend your attention on the hardware, because that is where these two actually differ — and where the price step goes. The cost-per-page line is flat between them.

Where the step-up earns its price

With cost off the table, the differences are the screen, the duplex unit, and not much else. From the G3290 you get the gear you walk up and touch; from the G3270 you get the same engine for less money and a plainer front panel.

The clearest split is two-sided printing. The G3270 is flatly Single-sided printing — every double-sided document means flipping the stack by hand. The G3290 does Auto 2-sided printing, which for a household running reports, homework, or two-up handouts is the single feature most likely to justify the step. Both are full Wireless Print/Copy/Scan all-in-ones with a flatbed scanner, so copying and scanning carry across.

Then the control screen. The G3270 runs off a 1.35” Square LCD display — a thumbnail you nudge with buttons. The G3290 upgrades to a 2.7” LCD Color Touchscreen, which makes walk-up copy and scan jobs faster and the setup menus far less of a chore. Neither sibling prints straight from a USB stick — a G3290 owner confirms If you mean about printing with USB stick, then yea, it does not have that — so both lean on Wi-Fi or a wired PC connection for jobs. Speed is a wash too: an independent reviewer clocked the G3270 at It prints about 11 pages per minute in black and 6 in color, and the G3290 shares the engine, so expect the same. We map the full set of yardsticks behind these calls — duplex, screen, speed, yield — in our inkjet printers evidence hub.

The quirks both rungs share

One set of failure modes ignores the price tag entirely: these are the same family, so they inherit the same trouble. This is the part no MegaTank buyer escapes by paying more.

Both run liquid ink, so both dry out if left alone. Canon's MegaTank radios across this line draw connectivity complaints — one G3270 owner calls the printer's ability to connect to wifi and stay connected is ABYSMAL, it constantly goes offline, and the G3290 sits on the same platform. Power matters too: a G3290 owner warns that the heads can dry because They don't always cap the nozzles if they're turned off from an external switch rather than the printer's own button. On the G3270, a near-empty tank can fail harder — Apparently because the yellow ink was getting low air can get locked in the print tube, which can brick the machine. The fix is the same and it is free: print in color weekly and shut down through the power button. Consumer Reports' inkjet reliability testing reaches the same conclusion that idle inkjets are the ones that fail, and RTINGS scores risk-of-clogging as a first-class metric for exactly this reason.

On the page itself, neither sibling disappoints, and neither separates from the other. The G3270's pigment-based black with dye CMY means the G3270 uses pigment-based black with dye-based CMY. Pigment-based ink doesn't adhere to some glossy media, a real caveat for glossy photo stock that the G3290 shares as the same-family engine. For heavy color runs the platform holds up under owner reports of long unattended print sessions. Print quality simply isn't where this decision lives; for the Canon MegaTank line, cost-per-page is a tie and the fork is duplex plus the screen. Canon's own MegaTank specifications confirm the shared four-ink design.

Canon MegaTank G3270

Canon MegaTank G3290

So which MegaTank — pay up or save?

Because the ink math is a tie, "who buys which" comes down to one question: are the G3290's two upgrades — automatic duplex and a color touchscreen — worth its price step for how you print? If you're coming from a clogged or bricked cartridge printer, either MegaTank is the upgrade, and the cost savings land the same on both. The split is purely about features versus the gap.

Buy the Canon G3290 if…

…you print double-sided, or you want a real control screen. The automatic duplex unit is the feature most likely to earn the step — every back-to-back document prints unattended instead of forcing you to flip the stack. The 2.7-inch color touchscreen makes copy, scan, and setup faster than nudging a thumbnail readout with buttons. You pay more upfront and accept a thinner owner-review base than the older sibling, but you get the same proven MegaTank ink economics with the hardware most home offices actually want. For most buyers cross-shopping these two, this is the one.

Buy the Canon G3270 if…

…the price gap is wide and you never print double-sided. The G3270 gives you the identical rated yield, the same two years of in-box ink, and the same low cost-per-page for less money — the only things you surrender are auto-duplex and the bigger screen. Its deep, years-long owner record is also reassuring in a way the newer G3290's short review history can't match yet. If you flip the rare duplex page by hand without complaint and drive the printer from your phone, the cheaper rung is honest money saved. We weigh where the whole MegaTank line sits against Epson in our guide to Canon inkjet printers.

Skip both if…

…you print rarely, or you need office volume features neither has. A printer that sits idle for weeks will fight you on either rung — a color laser is the honest pick for sporadic use. And neither of these entry MegaTanks carries an automatic document feeder or a second paper tray, so a busy office that scans stacks or runs high volume should step up a tier in the line. For the full cross-brand running-cost picture, weigh both against the field in our best supertank printers roundup.