By The 2020 Coronavirus pandemic has changed a lot of things, especially how we get work done. There are more people working from home, students getting their education from the house and we’re generally more in the house than ever before.
For this reason, you probably have a home office setup now, even if it just entails a simple desk and chair but there’s one more thing that is proving to be essential for your home, no, not internet but a printer (reliable internet is important too).
Whether the use case is printing work documents, signing them then scanning to send them back or simply printing out your child’s assignments, the need to have a good printer in the house has emerged. Like the process of purchasing any electronic device, getting a printer that suits all your needs isn’t an easy task and this is why we have taken the liberty to do the homework for you and found one that seems to tick all the boxes for a perfect home printer.
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Canon PIXMA G-series
Retailing at between KES 18,000 and KES 20,000, depending on where you buy one, the Canon PIXMA G3411 is a 3-in-1 compact printer that will meet the needs of a good number of households.
Inside the box of the printer, you will find the device itself, a power cable, setup CD for those that need it, 2 print heads, 5 cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and two black) and the usual instruction manual that you will need to pay attention to.
Setting up the printer is pretty straight forward if you have never done so, just consult the instruction manual. In a nutshell, all you have to do is attach the print heads, fill up the ink tanks and then connect the printer to a network since it’s a wireless printer.
Technical Specifications
| Functions | Wi-Fi, Print, Copy, Scan, Cloud Link |
| Print Resolution | Up to 48001 x 1200 dpi |
| Print Technology | 2 FINE Cartridges (Black and Colour) Refillable ink tank printer |
| Borderless Printing | Yes (A4, Letter, 20x25cm, 13x18cm, 13x13cm, 10x15cm) |
| Standard Ink Cartridges | GI-490 |
| Supported Paper Types | Plain Paper High Resolution Paper (HR-101N) Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (PP-201) Photo Paper Pro Luster (LU-101) Photo Paper Plus Semi-gloss (SG-201) Glossy Photo Paper "Everyday Use" (GP-501) Matte Photo Paper (MP-101) Envelope |
| Maximum Paper Input | Rear tray: Max. 100 sheets (plain paper) |
| Supported Paper Sizes | A4, A5, B5, 10x15cm, 13x18cm, 20x25cm, Envelopes (DL, COM10), Letter, Legal |
| Scanner Resolution (Optical) | 600 x 1200 dpi |
| Maximum Copies Made At a Time | 20 |
The Impressive Stuff
Print Quality
The PIXMA G-Series printer does its job pretty well from our short usage. The print quality is really good for a printer at this price point. We have used other printers and the difference is very much noticeable. This is especially true when printing images on glossy paper with the borderless option enabled, as this ensures your image reaches the edges of the paper without any disturbing white borders.
Print Speed
It’s not super fast but it’s fast enough not to be annoying. While printers in this price range tend to take their sweet time delivering your prints, we found the PIXMA G3411 to be quite fast. From our tests, the printer would deliver a single black and white page in about 10 seconds, while coloured pages would be delivered in about 30 seconds. However, for photos and images printed on harder papers like the glossy paper that we tested on took two and a half minutes to complete.
Wireless Connectivity
While most printers nowadays support wireless connectivity, the Canon PIXMA G-Series has taken it a notch higher by including a companion app for your smartphone. We found the app to be especially useful as it had more features than the desktop companion on PC. For instance, the mobile app has more image templates for printing your photos, interesting templates include collages, printing your image as a calendar and even printing business cards, party invites, stickers, posters and more all from your phone.
The Disappointments
Doesn’t Work on Mac
If you are a Mac user, then there’s bad news for you, the PIXMA G-series doesn’t work on Many Mac product. It works perfectly on Windows and works even better on iPhones and Android devices but that’s where Canon draws the line. There’s no reason given for this deduction, but it’s something worth knowing as you step out to buy this printer.
A bit of colour inconsistency
Remember when we mentioned that the printing quality was impressive? It is, that doesn’t change but we did notice that depending on how you choose to print a document, the colours may be washed out. For example, if you choose to print directly by right-clicking the menu on your PC, you might get blacks that look grey and reds that look more of orange, however, opening the document and printing through an app, say Microsoft Word, the colours appear true as they should be.
Should You Buy One? Yes. We are Even Giving You One!
While the statement above does let the cat out of the bag, the truth is that the Canon PIXMA G3411 is a great 3-in-1 printer that’s suitable for most homes. We found the printer to be ink friendly, with a rating of 6000 black and white pages and 7000 coloured pages per full tank of ink (obviously we didn’t print this much but our ink level has barely moved despite all the photos we printed).
The printer is available in Kenya at multiple outlets, with the ink cartridges also readily available. While we do recommend that anyone looking for a home or small office printer to buy the G-Series, we welcome you to try your luck with the giveaway below and you might just save up some money.
Canon PIXMA G-Series Giveaway Terms and Conditions
- The giveaway runs between December 9th 2020 and December 16th 2020 with the winner being announced on December 18th 2020.
- The giveaway is only for readers in Kenya. Those outside Nairobi can have the printer shipped to them via their preferred courier at their own risk and cost.
- The winner will be required to share a photo of the printer once they receive it and we reserve the right to share the photo on our social media platforms.
- The printer being given away is the exact one that we reviewed. Therefore note that we have used a bit of ink and glossy paper that are also part of the giveaway.
- The employees of Wee Media, the company that runs Gadgets Africa, and their families are exempted from participating in the competition.
- The competition winner will be selected through a draw, therefore, no person will have any influence on whom will be selected the winner, the more entries you have, the more your chances of winning.
- The giveaway is only open to persons over the age of 18.
If you agree to the above Terms and Condition, please use the widget below to enter the competition:
Very interesting and wonderful explanation