Patent ID: 7784898

Claim:
An ink jet recording apparatus for discharging ink from a recording head to a recording medium to execute recording, comprising: the recording head including a plurality of discharge ports for discharging ink supplied from an ink tank, and a plurality of heating elements, each heating element provided for each of the discharge ports; a detection unit configured to detect a remaining amount of ink in the ink tank; a preliminary discharge unit configured to discharge ink from the discharge ports, unrelated to recording, by applying energy to the heating elements to recover the recording head; and a control unit configured to perform control so that when the remaining amount of ink detected by the detection unit is less than a predesignated remaining amount of ink, energy applied to the heating elements per unit time by the preliminary discharge unit is smaller as compared with energy applied to the heating elements per unit time when the remaining amount of ink is more than or equal to the predesignated remaining amount of ink.