Pilot Frixion Pen

Purchased as a single for $2.29

The Pilot Flexion Pen writes very smoothly, with good startup and no ink feed glitches that I've seen. Erasing works pretty well, with most of the ink disappearing. You can still see a slight shadow of the ink behind, but it's pretty faint. The Eraser doesn't rip up the paper, either.

I'm not so happy with the ink color, as it's a very light black/dark grey. The Pen leaves a wet ink trail that dry's over ~ 15 sec, so a lefty may have trouble with this pen.

The pen itself is comfortable to write with. It's a capped pen, with a nice rubberized grip and good diameter for writing.

The graphic design is pretty bad. It looks like a tribal tattoo design, printed in silver on a black pen body.

Overall I'll give it a C, primarily for the graphics. if you don't mind trying too hard for that, it's a decent erasable pen.

Pentel Hyper-G

The Pentel HyperG 0.7 is a refreshing pen to look at after the Frixion. There is a nice diamond pattern on the inside of the barrel, which provides some nice subtle eye candy from the light reflections. The rubber finger grip is also nicely shaped, with subtle scallops in the design, leading to an interesting feature on the top of the pen point.

The tip unscrews to get the refill out, and Pentel did a nice job of indexing the threads so that the chrome tip always stay's in the same orientation as you remove and replace it.

The Clip is metal, and firmly attached to the pen, so it's unlikely to break.

Now, onto the important stuff. This leaves a Pentel KLR7 refill. it leaves a nice, deep black line, with the occasionally ink flow startup problem. No globs or skipping that I've seen. There isn't much writing feedback when using this, the pen point slides over the paper with an almost greasy feel. I'm not sure if this would be the same in an 0.5 size point or if it's due to the ink used.

Overall, I'd give this a B. Writes nicely, and is pleasant to look at.


Purchased as a single for $1.99

Pilot VBall RT Extra Fine

Another Gel Pen from Pilot. This is a fairly nice writer, with a nice black line and quick ink startup. This uses the Pilot bls-vb5rt ink cartridge. The Design is fairly interesting, with a black and white color scheme. The grip is a soft rubber compound, a bit stickier than the Uniball Vision RT.

This doesn't have the nice feature of retracting when it's put into a pocket, which is a nice feature of the Uniball.

Purchased at a 3 pack for $5.49/$1.83 Each.

I'm giving this a B Grade. It's a nice writer, with a good thick black line, and starts up reliably. I'm realizing that I like the automatic retract feature on the Uniball, so I'm going to upgrade the Uniball Vision RT to a B+