Received new G7020, not yet opened. Should I return it? (since no maintenance cartridge)

[CanonCannon]

Hi, just received my G7020 yesterday, at about the same time I stumbled onto a review comment that the G7020 doesn't have a maintenance cartridge.  At first I didn't even know what it meant, but now that I've read up on it, it seems like a deal breaker.  Looks like the G6020 suffers from the same issue (although I've not seen that stated)  

I see the G3270 has a maintenance cartridge available.  Is that the closest ink tank printer to the G7020 that has a maintenance cartridge, without going over the price of the G7020 (like to the GX line).  

Seems like some G7020 owners are kind of angry about this issue.  Any insights would be greatly appreciated. 

[david07666]

By "maintenance cartridge" are you referring to an ink absorbing pad?  You are correct that the pad is not user serviceable (it's come up before).  OTOH, there aren't a lot of complaints about that so my guess is that it's not a big issue.  I bought the care pack with mine which gives me a four year coverage window and I figure if I can get four years out of it I'll be happy. I bought mine in April, 2022 for small office work and have printed about 19,000+ pages so far. I'm quite happy given the low ink costs.

[david07666]

On the other hand, I just saw this

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Desktop-Inkjet-Printers/Canon-Pixma-G7020-Error-5B00-refuses-to-r...

[CanonCannon]

david07666, thanks very much for the info..  Regarding the other thread that you pointed me to, I apparently didn't do a good enough search because I didn't find that.  I too hope they come back with a print count.

I'm also interested in weather printing borderless photos accelerates the problem (or maybe that introduces a different problem altogether) ??  I might go ask a question in the other thread, asking how difficult was it to get to the absorber pads.

[david07666]

If you are looking to print photo quality, I don't believe this is the printer you want. I had a printing problem with JPGs which I was eventually able to trace to an issue in Windows, but while knocking my head against the wall, I called Canon tech support.  They told me that they don't regard this as a photo printer. I would look for reviews that specifically talk about this, or even call them.  

FYI, for that printing problem, my JPGs came out with washed out colors. If I saved the same file as a PDF it printed great.  Eventually, I found out there's some obscure file in Windows that maps color codes and that it was almost certainly the problem. I just use it to print flyers so it didn't matter to my whether I saved it as a JPG or a PDF so I never tried to fix that file.

[CanonCannon]

Okay, thanks david07666 !  I mainly need it as a family printer, but would like to do borderless photos once in a while.  I too may buy the 4 year CarePak, so that way I'm at least guaranteed to get some service years out of it (as long as Canon stands behind their warranty).  This printer is considerably less expensive than say the GX4020 that I was also considering, which I'm sure is a better quality printer (that uses all pigment ink, not just for black), but I'm more about true overall cost-per-print and the GX4020 costs a lot more up front. 

[david07666]

"Im'm more about true overall cost-per-print"

I'm with you. I just did a print count and am at 21K pages and I estimate the print costs at between 1.1 and 1.5 cents/page. 

[kirkanthony]

well, that would explain why my photos look like crap. My previous Canon Printer was a true photo printer, although it handled documents great as well. Thanks for the information.