Canon PIXMA G4280 Cost Per Page: A $23 Bottle Behind Low Running Costs
The Canon PIXMA G4280 is a Wi-Fi ink tank printer that prints, copies and scans, with automatic duplex and a touchscreen control panel. It sells for $280. Running costs land at $0.38 per 100 pages in black and $0.97 in color. The black figure traces to the CN-GI21-BK bottle, priced at $23 and rated for 6,000 pages.
Within Canon's G-series ink tank lineup, the G4280 sits between the entry-level G3270, at $249, and the pricier G6020 and G7020, at $324 and $380. The G3270 drops both duplex printing and the touchscreen; the G6020 adds Ethernet but loses the touchscreen; the G7020 adds fax and Ethernet while also losing the touchscreen. All three match the G4280's black and color rates, $0.38 and $0.97 per 100 pages, part of a five-way tie for the color running-cost floor among ink tank printers — one more model beyond these three shares it.
Epson's EcoTank ET-2980 prints black text for $0.29 per 100 pages, a solid lead over the G4280's own black rate, though its $1.08 color cost sits a shade above the G4280's. It sells for $330. The ET-3930 and ET-3950, at $390 and $400, share those same Epson rates but print faster — 18 ppm, well past the G4280's 11 ppm — and both add Ethernet while dropping the touchscreen.
For black-only work, the HP LaserJet Pro 4006dw prints at $2.23 per 100 pages, well above what the G4280 charges for black, though it costs $400 up front and drops copy and scan in favor of printing alone. It also adds Ethernet, and at 47 ppm it easily outpaces the G4280, which tops out at 11 ppm. Across every type InkTax tracks, the G4280 ranks 8th of 97 printers on black-and-white cost per page.