Review: Ability Ink Saver

All printers come with a 'draft' mode, which is designed to be used for documents that don't really need to use a lot of ink – travel directions, things to print and read once, and other documents that won't be kept.

The problem is that documents printed in draft mode often look awful. That's where Ink Saver comes in – it's a piece of software that sits between the computer and the printer.

It intercepts any prints and doctors them so that for a small drop in quality, less ink is used. Essentially, it does this by making the text and images lighter.

If that process sounds complicated, the software is simple. It installs easily, and once done, you select a printer to use - however it will only work with inkjets. Then a small ink-drop icon appears in the Notification Area. This is the control panel for Ink Saver.

That's where the user can select how much ink to save using a slider – from zero (no change) to 75 per cent. There's even a section that estimates how much money will be saved. Then, each time you print, it's automatically and silently run through Ink Saver first.

You'll need to remember to turn it off for important documents, and if it detects photo paper, it will suggest disabling itself for that print – it's not recommended for photo prints.

Quality was good – at 25 per cent, the difference was only slightly noticeable. At 50 per cent it was still readable, and even at 75 per cent reduction, the text was only just becoming hard to make out.

All of the settings were far more readable than the printer's default draft settings, which made text extremely faint and hard to read.

The one remaining advantage of draft mode is speed – Ink Saver prints take the same amount of time as normal ones, whereas draft prints are generally extremely quick.

It's hard to quantify any savings as these will vary between manufacturers and models of printers, but for people printing a lot of one-off text documents, the savings could be sizeable.