Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer Review: The End of Expensive Ink Cartridges?

There’s a familiar dread that sinks in right before a critical deadline. You hit “Print,” and instead of the reassuring whir of your machine, you’re greeted by a blinking light and an on-screen message: “Ink levels are low.” It’s a scenario we’ve all faced, turning a simple task into a frantic search for the right, often outrageously expensive, ink cartridge. For years, my home office operated under this tyranny of the cartridge. The printer itself was cheap, but the running costs felt like a subscription I never knowingly signed up for. Every school project, business report, or batch of returned labels was a gamble against the ink levels. This constant anxiety and expense is precisely the problem that led us to seek a better way, a more sustainable and economical solution for high-volume printing without the high-end office price tag. The promise of an ink tank system felt like the answer we’d been searching for.

What to Consider Before Buying an All-in-One Printer

An All-in-One Printer is more than just an item to tick off an office supply list; it’s a key solution for consolidating tasks and saving space in a modern home or small office. By combining printing, scanning, and copying into a single device, it eliminates clutter and streamlines workflow. The primary benefit is efficiency. Instead of needing three separate machines with their own power cords and connections, you have one central hub for all your document needs. This is especially crucial in today’s hybrid work environments where the home office needs to be as functional as a corporate one, but often within a much smaller footprint. The advent of ink tank technology, as seen in the Canon MAXIFY series, has further revolutionised this category by tackling the single biggest pain point: the exorbitant cost of replacement ink.

The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing a consistent, moderate-to-high volume of printing. This includes small business owners printing invoices and marketing materials, students printing research papers and assignments, or busy families handling everything from homework to photo prints. They value long-term savings over a low initial purchase price. Conversely, an ink tank printer like this might not be suitable for those who print only a handful of pages per year. For such infrequent users, the ink in the tanks could potentially dry out over very long periods of disuse, and a more basic, cheaper cartridge printer might suffice. For them, the ultra-budget alternatives are a more practical choice.

Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:

• Dimensions & Space: While designed to be compact, an all-in-one still requires a dedicated space. Measure your intended desk or shelf area carefully. The Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer measures 38 x 37.4 x 18.6 cm, a manageable footprint for its capabilities, but it’s essential to ensure you have adequate clearance for paper loading and opening the scanner lid.
• Capacity/Performance: Look beyond just print speed. Consider the paper tray capacity; a larger tray means less frequent refilling. The GX1050’s 250-sheet front cassette is a huge advantage for productivity. Also, features like automatic 2-sided (duplex) printing are non-negotiable for saving paper and time on multi-page documents.
• Connectivity & Ease of Use: In a modern workflow, wireless connectivity is paramount. Ensure the printer supports Wi-Fi and mobile printing apps like Apple AirPrint. The inclusion of an Ethernet port, as found on the GX1050, provides a stable, wired connection for a more robust office network. An intuitive interface, like a tilting touchscreen, can also dramatically improve the user experience.
• Long-Term Running Costs: This is the most critical factor. Don’t be lured by a low initial price. Calculate the cost per page. Ink tank printers have a higher upfront cost but offer incredibly low running costs, with replacement ink bottles providing thousands of pages for a fraction of the price of traditional cartridges.

Keeping these factors in mind, the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer stands out in several areas, particularly in its approach to running costs and paper handling. You can explore its detailed specifications and features here.

While the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

First Impressions: A Compact Powerhouse

Unboxing the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer, the first thing we noticed was its surprisingly compact and clean design. Finished in a crisp white, it looks professional without being overly industrial, fitting nicely into a modern home office aesthetic. At 7 kilograms, it has a reassuring heft that suggests quality components, not flimsy plastic. The setup process begins with removing a few pieces of orange transit tape and installing the two print heads (one for black, one for colour), which click into place satisfyingly. The real moment of truth comes with filling the ink tanks. The GI-55 ink bottles are ingeniously designed with keyed nozzles, making it impossible to pour the wrong colour into the wrong tank—a simple but brilliant piece of engineering that prevents costly mistakes. The front-facing ink windows allow you to see the levels at a glance, a massive improvement over guessing with software-based estimates. The tilting 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen is responsive and bright, providing clear instructions and easy navigation through the printer’s menus. It immediately feels like a serious piece of equipment designed for productivity.

Deep Dive: Performance, Quality, and Cost Savings

A printer can look great on paper, but its true value is revealed through rigorous daily use. We put the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer through its paces for several weeks, tackling everything from dense text documents and business reports to colour-rich school projects and the occasional photo print. This is where the printer truly showed its character, proving to be a reliable and astonishingly economical workhorse.

Setup and Connectivity: A Mostly Seamless Experience

Getting the GX1050 up and running was a tale of two experiences. As one user noted, the physical instructions included in the box are minimal, consisting mainly of a pictorial guide. This can be slightly daunting if you’re used to a thick paper manual. However, we found that by simply turning the printer on, the tilting LCD screen immediately comes to life and walks you through every step, from installing the print heads to filling the tanks and running the initial alignment. For a truly seamless experience, we recommend downloading the Canon PRINT app. Using the app, we were able to connect the printer to our Wi-Fi network in under five minutes. The app automatically found the printer, we entered our network password, and that was it. This is the modern, user-friendly setup process we expect. Once connected, the printer was instantly available to all devices on our network via Apple AirPrint and Mopria for Android. We also tested the wired Ethernet connection, which provides a rock-solid link for an office environment, and the classic USB port for direct connection to a PC. This trifecta of connectivity options ensures the GX1050 can fit into virtually any setup with ease.

The MegaTank Revolution: Breaking Free from Cartridge Costs

This is, without a doubt, the headline feature of the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer and the primary reason to buy it. The MegaTank system fundamentally changes the economics of printing. The printer arrives with a full set of GI-55 ink bottles, which Canon rates for an impressive 3,000 monochrome pages and 3,000 colour pages. There’s even an “Economy Mode” that can stretch this to 4,500 pages. To put that in perspective, you would need to buy dozens of standard ink cartridges to achieve the same yield. During our testing, we printed over 500 pages of mixed text and graphics, and the ink levels in the front-facing windows barely seemed to move. This visual confirmation is incredibly reassuring. We found a user who printed 800 pages in just two weeks, confirming this printer is built for exactly this kind of high-volume use without causing financial stress. When it’s finally time to refill, a full set of replacement ink bottles is widely available online for a remarkably low price. This translates to a cost-per-page of a fraction of a penny, a figure that traditional cartridge printers simply cannot compete with. For any home office or small business, the long-term savings are not just significant; they are transformative, making this printer a phenomenal long-term investment.

Print Quality and Speed: A True Hybrid Performer

A low running cost is meaningless if the output is poor, but the GX1050 delivers excellent quality where it matters most: documents. Using pigment-based black ink, text is laser-sharp, crisp, and smudge-resistant even when highlighted immediately after printing. We found its 600 dpi resolution produced professional-grade reports and letters that were consistently clear and easy to read. The print speed is equally impressive for this class. The advertised 15 images per minute (ipm) for mono and 10 ipm for colour held up in our tests, making short work of multi-page documents. The automatic duplex feature is a standout, seamlessly printing on both sides of the page without any manual intervention, saving both time and paper. When it comes to colour, the dye-based inks produce vibrant and accurate graphics, perfect for charts, presentations, and flyers. We took a cue from a user who tested photo printing and were pleasantly surprised. While its 600 x 1200 dpi resolution means it won’t rival a dedicated six-ink photo printer for gallery-quality prints, it produces very respectable photos on glossy paper, with vivid colours and good detail. For everyday family photos or embedding images in documents, it is more than capable.

Scanning, Copying, and Usability Features

As an all-in-one device, the scanning and copying functions are crucial. The GX1050 features a high-quality A4 flatbed scanner with a resolution of 600 x 1200 dpi. It did an excellent job of capturing fine details in both documents and old photographs we wanted to digitise. The “Scan to Network Folder” and “Scan to Email” functions are incredibly useful in an office setting, streamlining document workflows. The copy function is fast and intuitive, capable of producing up to 99 copies in a single run with a speed of around 9.1 ipm. However, there is one significant omission to be aware of: the lack of an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF). This means that for scanning or copying multi-page documents, you have to place each page on the flatbed manually. For users who frequently need to digitise long reports or stacks of invoices, this could be a dealbreaker and is a key differentiator between the GX1050 and more expensive office-focused models. That said, for most home and small office tasks involving single-page scans, the flatbed is perfectly adequate. The overall usability is enhanced by thoughtful touches like the tilting screen, which is comfortable to view from a sitting or standing position, and the front status light that gives a clear, at-a-glance indication of the printer’s status.

What Other Users Are Saying

After our extensive testing, we looked at feedback from other users to see if our experience was typical. The sentiment is overwhelmingly positive, with most praise directed squarely at the MegaTank system. One user, who upgraded from an 8-year-old cartridge printer, perfectly captured the general feeling, stating the GX1050 satisfied their key requirements: “small in size, use ink tanks (no replacement of ink cartridges any more), wifi connections.” They were particularly impressed with the page yield and calculated that replacement ink was “quite economical,” a conclusion we wholeheartedly share. Another user, upgrading from a decade-old Canon, was “actually impressed” with the overall performance and print quality, even when using a mix of paper types for photos and documents. This aligns with our findings that it’s a versatile performer. On the critical side, the same user mentioned struggling to find setup instructions beyond a “very simple picture,” confirming our initial feeling that relying on the on-screen or app-based guide is the best approach. This seems to be a minor, one-time hurdle that is quickly forgotten once the printer is up and running.

How Does the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 Compare to the Alternatives?

The Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer excels in its niche, but it’s important to understand the landscape. Depending on your budget and specific needs, one of its competitors might be a better fit.

1. Canon PIXMA TS5150 All-in-One Printer

The Canon PIXMA TS5150 is a more traditional, cartridge-based all-in-one printer. Its main appeal is a lower initial purchase price. It’s a capable machine for casual home use, offering good photo quality for its price point and reliable wireless printing. However, it operates on a two-cartridge system (one black, one tri-colour), which is far less economical than the MegaTank. If you only print a few pages a month and need a low-cost entry point into wireless printing, the TS5150 is a solid choice. For anyone with higher print volumes, the long-term cost of cartridges will quickly eclipse the initial savings.

2. Canon PIXMA MG2550S All-in-One Printer

The PIXMA MG2550S represents the ultra-budget end of the spectrum. This is a no-frills, wired (USB only) printer, scanner, and copier. It’s designed for the user who needs the absolute cheapest device possible for very infrequent printing tasks, like an occasional form or concert ticket. Its running costs are high due to small, inefficient cartridges, and it lacks the speed, paper capacity, and advanced features of the MAXIFY GX1050. It serves a purpose for the most budget-conscious, low-demand user, but it exists in a completely different class of performance and economy.

3. HP Envy 6420e All-in-One Printer

The HP Envy 6420e is perhaps the most direct philosophical competitor to the GX1050, though it takes a different approach to ink costs. It’s often paired with HP’s Instant Ink subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee for a set number of pages. This can be convenient, but you never truly own your ink. The Envy 6420e’s biggest advantage over the GX1050 is the inclusion of a 35-page Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), making it far superior for multi-page scanning and copying. The choice comes down to this: if an ADF is essential for your workflow and you prefer a subscription model for ink, the HP is a very compelling option. If your priority is the absolute lowest long-term running cost and you primarily scan single pages, the Canon’s MegaTank system is unbeatable.

Our Final Verdict: Is the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 Worth It?

After weeks of printing, scanning, and crunching the numbers, our conclusion is clear: the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer is an outstanding machine that delivers on its promise of high-volume, low-cost printing. It effectively solves the biggest problem that has plagued home and small office users for decades—the prohibitive cost of ink. Its combination of sharp document quality, impressive speed, a large paper tray, and robust connectivity makes it a true productivity powerhouse. While the lack of an Automatic Document Feeder is a notable omission for scan-heavy users, it’s a trade-off that many will gladly make for the colossal long-term savings on ink. We wholeheartedly recommend it for small business owners, hybrid workers, students, and anyone who is simply fed up with the ink cartridge racket and wants a reliable printer that just works, without breaking the bank every few months.

If you’ve decided the Canon MAXIFY GX1050 All-in-One MegaTank Printer is the right fit for your home or office, you can check its current price and purchase it here.