Printer Test Page (universal)
Print an all-in-one printer test sheet.
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 Printer Test Page (universal) · print at 100% · plain paper
Colour bars
Grayscale — 0% to 100% in 10% steps
CMYK — solid ink blocks
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
Alignment — registration crosshairs (lines should meet cleanly)
How this test page works
The sheet combines the checks that expose the most common printer problems — colour accuracy, grayscale banding, nozzle gaps, text sharpness and head alignment — so one print tells you a lot.
What the results mean
- Colour bars & CMYK
- Solid colour should be even and accurate. Banding or a missing colour points at a nozzle problem.
- Text sharpness
- Small type should stay crisp; fuzzy edges suggest alignment or resolution issues.
Common problems and fixes
- Several things look wrong at once and I do not know where to start
- Work from mechanism outward. Check alignment and feed first, since a misaligned head or a slipping roller degrades everything else and makes colour judgements meaningless. Then nozzles, then density, then colour accuracy last — it is the only one that depends on all the others being right.
- The page looks fine but my real documents do not
- Compare the settings. A test sheet printed at best quality on fresh paper is not the condition a draft-mode document prints under, and the difference between them is often the entire problem. Reprint this page with the exact settings and paper the failing job uses.
- Two prints of this sheet disagree with each other
- Something in the driver is not constant between them. Auto-enhancement, a quality mode that reverts per job, or a paper type that does not match the loaded stock will each shift several sections at once — which reads as an unstable printer. Fix the settings first, print twice, and only then treat a remaining difference as a hardware fault.
Frequently asked questions
What paper should I use?
Whatever you normally print on, so the test reflects real use. Plain paper is fine for diagnosing faults; save photo paper for the photo test page.
How often should I print a test page?
When something looks wrong, after replacing a cartridge, and before a job that matters — a batch of photographs, a document going to a client. Printing one on a healthy machine on a schedule achieves nothing except using ink. The genuinely useful habit for an inkjet is printing something in colour every week or two to stop the heads drying.
Which of the individual tests should I run after this one?
Whichever section looked wrong. Missing or weak colour sends you to the CMYK page and then a nozzle check; lines across a gradient to the banding test; ghosted or doubled text to the alignment page; anything crooked to the paper feed test. This sheet is the triage, and each dedicated page is the detail.