Black and white test page
Black ink and nothing else. Two solid flats, three ramps, five line widths and type down to four point — the sheet to print when the colour tanks are precious.
Print at 100 per cent with margins set to none — the sheet carries its own 10 mm margin, and a second one from the browser is what makes a printer shrink the page.
Nothing on this sheet is a mix
Every mark here asks for black alone, so a colour tank cannot be drained by printing it and a colour fault cannot muddy the result. If the sheet comes out with a warm or cool cast anyway, the driver is composing its greys from three colour inks — a setting usually labelled "black and white", "grayscale" or "use black cartridge only" that has not been switched on.
That single setting is behind more "my prints look brown" complaints than any hardware fault, and this sheet is the fastest way to see it.
Solids, ramps and the two ends
The two flats at the top should be genuinely different: one is full black, one is ninety per cent. If they match, the printer is saturating early and will lose every shadow in a photograph. Mottling — a flat that looks like wet sand rather than a sheet of ink — usually means damp paper or a head that needs cleaning.
Two of the ramps deliberately cover only ten per cent of the range each, at the light and dark ends. Those are the stretches where laser printers clip first, and stepping them one point at a time is the only way to see exactly where.
Small type, positive and reversed
The type samples run from four point up, first as black on white and then reversed out of a solid block. Reversed small type is the harder test: any spread in the ink closes the counters in letters like e and a, and the line turns into a row of dark blobs a size or two before positive type does.
Common questions
Will this page use my colour ink?
Not if your driver is set to use black only. Every element is specified as black ink alone, but a driver left on its default may still build the greys from colour inks — if the printed sheet has any cast, that is what happened.
The four point type is a smudge. Is the printer faulty?
Not necessarily. Four point is below what many inkjets resolve on plain paper. What matters is where it fails: if six and eight point are also filling in, the head or the paper is the problem rather than the size.
Why is the black more grey than black?
Usually plain paper absorbing ink and spreading it, or a driver in a draft or economy mode that halves the ink laid down. Print the same sheet in normal quality on the same paper before blaming the cartridge.