Bic Pro+ Ballpoint

 

The Bic Pro+ is a traditional retractable ballpoint with molded plastic body and a soft rubber overmold. The grip is nicely contoured, and the rubber runs under the pocket clip giving it good resistance to pulling out of a pocket. The Pocket clip is molded as part of the body, so it doesn't wiggle. The bottom of the clip is designed so that it won't grab onto your pocket, which is a nice feature.

 

The ink itself shows up as a dark grey, not quite the nice solid black that gell or liquid ink pens gives.

As a retractable, the pen point is held firmly when it's extended to write, so it doesn't wiggle about.

Overall, a pretty nice pen for a ballpoint.

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+

Uniball Vision RT

I ended up hitting the jackpot a last month when I went into the local Staples. There was a display in front with a bunch of different new pens, and so I picked up a bunch. I'll start with the Uniball Vision RT.

(Purchased @ 2.99 each, pretty steep, but it was sold in singles, which was nice)

I've stopped using a Moleskine for my daily writing. I finished off one, and I realized that:
1-I rarely go back and look at the things that I've written
2-I think before I write in the notebook, to make sure that I'm writing something that is worthwhile (Pretty sad, I know).

so I pulled a Circa notebook out of a pile,and printed out some day planner pages from diyplanner, and away I went. I'm scanning the pages to PDF as I write on them, so I have a permanent record of what I've written.

Now that I'm writing on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, I'm not so sensitive to writing so small, and a larger pen point is acceptable.

The Uniball Vision RT is a reasonably nice pen. I've been using the 0.6 point, and it writes reasonably well. Cosmetically, it's a nice looking pen, with a combination of clear and dark grey plastic. The dark grey is soft and grippy, but not as sticky as a real rubberized grip, so it slides in and out of a pocket easily.

One feature that I really like is the retract button has a release under the pocket clip. When you slide this into your shirt pocket, then fabric slides between the pen body and the pocket clip, and releases the ink cartridge so you don't pick up an ink spot in the bottom of your shirt pocket. The mechanism isn't particularly smooth, but it works reasonably well.

One nice thing about this pen is the tip is quite solid when you are writing. On some cheap pens I've used, the tip moves around as you are writing, something that I find very irritating.



Now, as to how it writes. This is a liquid ink pen, not a gel pen. Even though I'm not looking for a 0.18 pen, it writes a bit broad for my taste. In addition, it seems pretty sensitive to the amount of pressure on the tip. With a really light touch, I end up with a very fine line, and then when I put a little pressure on it, the line thickens up to the normal width. I also ran into some situations where the ink flow didn't start up immediately when I wrote. I picked up the Black, Blue, and Red, and then colors are quite nice. I get a thick, opaque line for all three colors.




Overall, I'd have to give this pen a B. It writes pretty well, it's attractive, and the pocket clip retract is a real plus.