What are the common problems with Canon printers?

Updated June 18, 2026

Canon’s problems sort by model, not by one flaw. The refillable MegaTank supertanks clog if left idle — This is my first tank printer which the owner bought knowing it needs regular use. The dye G-series can print low-saturation photos. The cheap cartridge PIXMAs draw fire for fast-draining ink and paper jams. And flaky Wi-Fi setup runs across the whole line.

Start with the clog, because it is the problem unique to Canon’s best value. A MegaTank feeds from refillable bottles, so its ink is cheap — but the heads still dry when the printer sits. RTINGS, which lab-tests printers and scores risk-of-clogging directly, flags this as a structural supertank weakness, not a Canon defect. The community remedy is blunt for heavy idlers: Return it for a color laser printer. Laser printers are much less fussy. There is even a hardware trap — They don't always cap the nozzles if they're turned off from an external switch, so a power-strip shutdown leaves the heads exposed to dry out.

MegaTank G3290

Refillable tanks

The second problem is connection. Wi-Fi setup is the loudest one-star theme across the PIXMA line per the owner reviews we synthesized — one MegaTank owner called the printer’s ability to connect to wifi and stay connected is ABYSMAL, it constantly goes offline. Setup itself adds friction before printing even starts: a TS6520 owner found Setting up a Canon account at their website actually took longer than setting up the printer, and a G3290 buyer hit a dead end where The setup page just kept spooling glitching and resetting. The good news is the drops are usually tameable — owners report binding the printer to one access point fixes the roaming. We map ink-lock and connection behavior model by model in our safety and known-risks guidance.

Third is the cartridge tax on the cheap PIXMAs. A budget Canon all-in-one sells for less than a tank of fuel, then feeds on small two-cartridge sets — and one MG3620 owner caught the trap that And Canon gives you a smaller cartridge in the printer, than they sell for replacements. The Reddit math is the same one our whole catalog turns on: the cheaper the printer the more expensive the ink cartridges, which is exactly why cross-shoppers conclude the megatank is a more reasonable choice because the refills for the first two are so expensive. We break the cartridge-versus-tank math down across the catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

The fourth cluster is plain reliability on the entry machines, the price of buying down. Consumer Reports tracks inkjet reliability and owner satisfaction, and the cheap PIXMAs are where Canon’s record frays: one MG3620 owner reported that From the very beginning it always had trouble pulling paper from the tray. Wi-Fi can be unusable enough that owners ration it — another resolved it by never using wireless printing for more than one or two pages. The community’s longevity verdict for brand-loyalists is short: Spend a bit more, get a Brother.

What are the disadvantages of MegaTank?

The MegaTank supertanks trade cheap bottle ink for one hard rule: print regularly or pay for it. Sit one idle for weeks and the printhead nozzles dry, so the next job runs a cleaning cycle that spends the ink you bought it to save. The other gripes are minor — opaque ink windows, fiddly Wi-Fi — but the clog risk is the one that catches idle owners out.

Honestly, that one clause hides under the bottle-ink savings until the day a job comes out streaked.

The irony is sharp. A MegaTank like the G3290 exists to stop you wasting money at the cartridge shelf, then quietly wastes it on cleaning cycles if you leave it dark. The remedy is a habit, not a different machine — run a colour page about once a week and the heads stay wet. For a household that prints in steady bursts, the disadvantages are footnotes against years of cheap ink. For a desk that prints twice a year, every footnote becomes the headline, and a color laser is the honest answer.

Is the Canon G620 a good printer?

For the photo hobbyist who colour-manages, yes; for plug-and-print, with a caveat. The G620 is a six-colour dye MegaTank that earns praise for vibrant prints on the right paper — and complaints that out-of-the-box saturation runs flat. The fix is a software step, not a return. Treat it as a printer that rewards calibration, not one that nails colour untouched.

So the honest verdict splits by buyer: a calibrating hobbyist gets lab-grade prints, a casual user gets flat ones.

The complaint is specific, and the cause is the paper. The six-colour G620 runs cheap — Canon rates it at roughly 2.5 cents per 4×6 photo — yet the biggest hidden gotcha reviewers flag is that Cannon does not inform people about, is that if you want to print quality photos you need the right stock — cheap glossy or matte sheets read flat. Where the prints land low-saturation, the resolution is a colour-management step, not a hardware swap: Edit your photos to increase saturation / vibrance. That fixed it for me. That is the pattern with the dye G-series — the hardware can produce gallery-grade prints, but it expects the operator to drive the colour and feed it proper paper. A buyer who wants saturated output straight from the tray should know that going in.

How to connect a Canon PIXMA printer to Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi setup is the single loudest Canon one-star theme, so expect friction. Use the Canon PRINT app, but if the printer keeps dropping offline, the durable fix owners report is to bind it to one access point by MAC address in the router. A wired fallback works too. Budget setup time — the Canon account registration alone can outlast the hardware setup.

Here’s the thing: the connection itself is rarely the printer’s fault so much as how it roams between bands and access points. One G3270 owner stabilised a flaky link by the manual route — Bind it to only one single access point with mac address rather than letting the printer auto-select. On a multi-router mesh that single change is often the whole fix. If setup still stalls, plug in over USB to get printing, then sort the wireless later. The account step is its own tax: registering at Canon’s site can take longer than the hardware, so do it once and move on.

PIXMA TS6520

Control panel

Which Canon printers are AirPrint compatible?

Most current Canon inkjets support Apple AirPrint, so an iPhone, iPad or Mac prints with no driver. The PIXMA TS, TR and G MegaTank lines all list AirPrint alongside the Canon PRINT app and Mopria. AirPrint itself is reliable; the connection problems owners report are about holding the Wi-Fi link, not the AirPrint protocol. Confirm the exact model on the spec sheet before you buy.

AirPrint is broad enough that it is rarely the reason to pick one Canon over another — the whole modern range carries it. According to Canon’s own printer specifications, the wireless all-in-ones list Apple AirPrint as a standard mobile path. So the question worth asking is not whether a Canon does AirPrint, but whether it holds its Wi-Fi long enough to use it — which loops back to the connection problem above. Get the network stable and AirPrint just works.

Does the Canon G7020 support AirPrint?

Yes. The Canon PIXMA G7020 MegaTank lists Apple AirPrint along with the Canon PRINT app and Mopria, so it prints wirelessly from Apple devices with no driver. Being a MegaTank, it inherits the line’s idle-clog caveat rather than any AirPrint-specific fault — keep it printing and the wireless path stays simple. Check the current spec sheet to confirm before purchase.

The G7020 is a step up the MegaTank ladder — an office-leaning supertank with an automatic document feeder — and its connectivity story matches the rest of the line. AirPrint and the Canon PRINT app cover the mobile side; the thing to watch is the same use-it-or-clog rule every MegaTank carries. Buy it for a home office that prints weekly and the bottle ink pays back; leave it idle and the cleaning cycles eat the savings. The mobile printing is the easy part — the running discipline is the real decision.

Add it up and Canon’s common problems are really two stories told across a wide range. The supertanks are cheap to feed but demand regular printing to dodge the clog; the budget cartridge PIXMAs are cheap to buy but dear to feed and shakier on paper and Wi-Fi. The G-series photo machines sit between, capable but expecting you to manage the colour. Match the model to how you print — often and bottle-fed, or rarely and laser — and most of these problems settle themselves. Mismatch it and every footnote on this page becomes your headline.