Black & White / Mono Test Page
Print a monochrome density and text test.
Print settings
Print this on the paper you normally use, then examine each section. What a healthy result looks like is described above each pattern on the sheet.
RunTheTests Black & White / Mono Test Page · print at 100% · plain paper
Grayscale — 0% to 100% in 10% steps
Text sharpness — decreasing sizes (all should be crisp and readable)
12pt — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 iIlL1 oO0
9pt — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 iIlL1 oO0
7pt — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 iIlL1 oO0
5pt — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 iIlL1 oO0
4pt — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 iIlL1 oO0
How this test page works
A grayscale ramp and multi-size text let you judge a mono printer or the black channel of a colour printer — even tone steps and crisp small text mean it is working.
What the results mean
- Grayscale steps
- Each step should be visibly distinct. Steps that merge at the dark or light end indicate a density problem.
Common problems and fixes
- Grey areas look grainy rather than smooth
- A monochrome printer builds grey by halftoning — a pattern of black dots — so grain is expected at low resolutions and on rough paper. If it is worse than it used to be, check the resolution setting has not been reduced for speed and that toner-save mode is off.
- The darkest steps all look the same
- The black channel is running too heavy, so everything above about 80% fills in solid. Lower the density or darkness setting, and on a laser printer check what the printer itself reports about the cartridge — one near the end of its life often prints darker and blotchier before it fails.
- The grayscale ramp prints differently each time
- Driver processing is changing the ramp between the page and the paper. Auto-contrast, photo-enhance and economy modes all remap tonal values, which is exactly what a density test measures — so the ramp moves while the printer stays the same. Turn off every enhancement and set the paper type to what is loaded.
Frequently asked questions
Why test in black and white?
To isolate the black channel. If colour prints look wrong but this sheet is perfect, the problem is in the colour inks or colour management, not the black toner or the mechanism.
My colour prints are wrong but this page is perfect. What does that tell me?
That the mechanism, the paper path and the black channel are all healthy, and the fault is in the colour inks or in colour management. That is a genuinely useful narrowing — it rules out alignment, feed and drum problems in one print, and points you at the CMYK page next.
Should I use black-ink-only mode for this test?
Print it both ways if you can. Black-ink-only shows what the black channel alone can do; the default composite mode shows what you actually get in normal use. A large difference between them means the printer is mixing colour inks into your greys, which is worth knowing before a long monochrome job.