A black-and-white looking page does not tell you which ink channels produced it. Greyscale describes the appearance of the output; a driver can have separate choices for how that appearance is created.

Read the full option name

HP's instructions for specified OfficeJet Enterprise and PageWide models distinguish High Quality greyscale, which uses a combination of colour and black inks, from Black Ink Only. That is a documented example, not a promise about every HP printer or any other brand.

Open the selected printer's properties and look for the exact colour controls. Check the model's manual if the driver presents only a simple colour switch. A missing advanced option may reflect the installed driver or model support; do not assume an option with a similar name behaves identically.

Choosing black-only output where supported also does not establish that the machine never consumes colour ink during other operations. Avoid treating a document setting as a guarantee about the printer's entire maintenance behaviour.

Preserve the meaning of the page

Before printing a report in greyscale, inspect charts, highlighted warnings and tables. A red line and a green line may become similar shades. Add meaningful labels or patterns in the source document if you control it, so readers can distinguish information without colour alone.

Print one representative page with the intended setting. Read the smallest text and compare adjacent shaded cells. If the document contains a photograph, decide whether tonal detail matters more than reducing colour output.

Save the accepted setting as a clearly named preset where the driver allows it. Recheck the preset after changing printers or drivers, because the saved name is not proof that the same underlying options remain available.

This process answers two separate questions: whether the chosen driver offers a black-ink mode, and whether the resulting page remains useful. Keeping both checks visible prevents an apparently economical setting from making the document harder to understand.

Sources: HP greyscale and black-ink options.