Black and White Printer Test Page
Print this free black and white printer test page to check text sharpness, line quality and ink or toner density. It works on mono laser printers, inkjets printing in grayscale mode and any color printer using only black ink.
Tip: To save this test page as a PDF, click the print button and choose “Save as PDF” as the destination in your browser’s print dialog. Set paper size to A4 or Letter and keep margins at default.
- Use 100% scale
- Turn off “fit to page” if available
- Print in color for color sheets
Black & White Printer Test Page
1 · Font Size Test (6px – 24px)
6px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789
8px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789
10px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789
12px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789
14px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789
18px — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
24px — The quick brown fox jumps.
Even 6px text should be readable on a healthy printer. Fuzzy or filled-in letters indicate quality problems.
2 · Thin and Thick Line Test
Lines from 0.25pt to 4px. All lines should print solid, straight and unbroken.
3 · Toner / Ink Density Blocks
Each block should be clearly darker than the one to its right, with the 100% block printing solid black.
4 · Solid Black Rectangles
Large black areas expose streaks, fading, gray patches and toner scatter.
5 · White-on-Black Sample
White letters should stay open and crisp. Letters that fill in indicate too much toner or ink bleed.
6 · Border and Spacing Test
Solid, dashed and dotted borders should print evenly on all four sides of each box.
7 · After-Print Checklist
How to Use This Black and White Test Page
This printer test sheet is designed for anything that prints in black: mono laser printers, all-in-one lasers, and inkjets using the black cartridge or grayscale mode.
Load plain paper
Standard A4 or Letter copy paper is ideal — it's what you'll be printing documents on anyway.
Print in black & white
Click the print button and, if you use a color printer, select black & white or grayscale mode in the print dialog.
Use normal quality
Test at the quality setting you use every day, so the result reflects your real documents.
Inspect in good light
Check the sheet under bright light — subtle streaks and gray patches are easy to miss in dim rooms.
What to Check After Printing
- Small text legibility: if 6px and 8px lines are unreadable while larger text is fine, the printer is losing fine detail — common with low toner or a dirty print head.
- Line continuity: broken thin lines on an inkjet usually mean clogged black nozzles; on a laser they can indicate a damaged drum.
- Density separation: if the 90% and 100% blocks look identical, dark tones are being crushed; if 18% barely shows, light tones are dropping out.
- Solid black quality: gray-looking blacks mean low toner or ink; vertical white streaks point to a blocked nozzle or toner distribution problem.
- Reversed text: white letters that partially fill in reveal ink spread or excess toner — text-heavy inverse designs will suffer.
- Repeating marks: on laser printers, a spot or mark repeating at regular intervals down the page usually indicates drum damage.
Black and White Testing for Laser and Inkjet Printers
Black-only printing is the most common job most printers do, yet it's often the last thing people test. On a laser printer, this black and white printer test page exposes toner problems long before they ruin an important document: fading on one side of the page suggests uneven toner distribution (try gently rocking the cartridge), while an overall light print usually means the toner is simply running out or the density setting is too low.
On an inkjet, black text problems are usually nozzle-related. The pigment black cartridge used for documents can clog when the printer sits idle, producing gray, patchy or broken text. If this sheet shows broken lines or weak blacks, run a head cleaning cycle and reprint. For deeper tone analysis, follow up with the grayscale test page, and if text looks doubled or fuzzy rather than faded, run the alignment test page instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Print it in black & white or grayscale mode from your print dialog, or simply print it normally — the sheet only uses black and gray tones, so it exercises the black channel either way.
Gray text usually means low toner (laser) or a partially clogged black nozzle (inkjet). It can also be caused by "toner save" or "draft" mode being enabled in the driver. Check the density blocks on the sheet: if 100% prints like 50%, output density is the problem.
On inkjets, white streaks are almost always clogged nozzles — run a cleaning cycle and reprint. On lasers, streaks can come from low toner, a scratched drum or debris on the transfer roller.
Small text is the hardest thing for a printer to render. If the 6px sample is crisp, your printer will handle contracts, footnotes and fine print without trouble. If small text fails while large text passes, the printer is losing resolution — often fixable with cleaning or a higher quality setting.