The answer — one pick, priced
Get the
Canon PIXMA G3270
$91 under your budget
The cheapest way out of cartridges — 6,000 black and 7,700 colour pages of bottled ink in the box, at under a cent a page.
Fit ledger — need → measured evidence
■ The catch — co-equal billing, always
No auto duplex and no ADF. Every two-sided page gets flipped by hand and every multi-page scan gets fed one sheet at a time — and at 11/6 ppm it is the slowest printer in this comparison. It is cheap because Canon left out the convenience, not the ink.
Dealbreaker? Runner-up №1 adds a duplex ADF and 22 ppm for $31 more ↓
■ Every product has a catch. Verdicts that hide it are how bad buys happen.
Don't buy this if…
- you need a portable/travel printer
- you need a large-format printer for posters/blueprints (larger than A3+)
- you need a label or receipt printer
- you need a 3D printer or specialty production printer
Wrong product for you is still a bad buy. These are the cases where we'd send you somewhere else.
Runners-up — if your needs differ
Adjacent verdicts — other needs, same method
Different budget, different household, different job — each of these is already researched, priced and verified. Take the one that matches your need.
Traps — this verdict avoids
Why the Canon PIXMA G3270 is right for you
It avoids every trap below — and for anyone, under $250, it is the pick because it delivers:
The ink outlives the printer
Cartridge inkjets run 5–10 cents a page; ink tank printers run under 1 cent mono. On a printer you actually use, the ongoing ink bill passes the purchase price inside a year — buy on running cost, not sticker price.
HP+ can lock the ink
HP's DeskJet and OfficeJet cartridge models can ship HP+ firmware that blocks third-party ink and requires an HP account, and activation may permanently tie the printer to HP Original cartridges. Epson, Canon and Brother tanks use open refill bottles with no DRM.
Same name, different machine
HP 9125e vs 9135e, Epson ET-2800 vs ET-2850 vs ET-2980, Canon G3270 vs GX4020 are different printers at different prices. Bundle SKUs stretch it further — the same Brother AIO listed at ~$170 on the cable bundle and ~$90 printer-only. Confirm the full model string before ordering.
Provenance — 9 sources, dated
Winners are picked from the full research dossier at knowledgelib.io. Prices, stock and listings are re-verified monthly.