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Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

jetpens.com

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Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#121

Post by emeril »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #26

What a great site! I realize that it is a store, but content like this is valuable: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Pilot-FriXion-Erasable-Pens-A-C... I recently found these erasable pens and they are incredible tech. The friction of rubbing the rubber eraser on the ink heats up the ink and causes the ink to turn invisible. It leaves no ink residue on the eraser.

these are a big deal in Japan - I found out about it through work and now I have my kids use them for homework instead of pencils or typical crappy american style erasable pens

but of course it confuses the teachers at the school and they insist my kids use pencils at school...

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#122

Post by jerlam »

analog31 wrote: post #119

My biggest peeve is pens that dry up or stop working. So I propose a category, "best pen for finding in your glove compartment." Is there a particular type that's better than the others?

Probably the pressurized ballpoints like the Space Pen:

https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Pressurized-Ink-Pens/p...

They don't write as nicely as fountain or gel pens, but when you need to write on receipt paper or a waxed carton, they will work.

You can put the Fisher Space Pen refills in any pen that takes a Parker ballpoint refill.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#124

Post by jerlam »

bambax wrote: post #22

I'm surprised there's a market for budget foutain pens. We mostly don't write by hand anymore and if we do, it's to jolt down notes. One chooses to use a fountain pen for the thrill of it, or for love of tradition. In those cases, money is no object. A budget fountain pen is like a budget race car. Obviously I'm wrong, but I'm not sure why.

Luxury fountain pens rarely provide a better writing experience than a budget one. Montblancs had a reputation (don't know about the present) for fragile pens that wrote like every other fountain pen. You're paying for the white blob in the cap. Many luxury pens use very similar nibs as the cheaper pens, just adorned with gold and engraving that doesn't add to the writing experience.

If you want tradition, you can buy vintage pens - they work great. The Parker 51 is usually claimed to be the epitome of fountain pens. They aren't luxury in any way - they don't even look like fountain pens, but they just write and write. Vintage Esterbrook pens have replaceable nib options that put any modern pen to shame.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#125

Post by hnu0847 »

kloch wrote: post #68

Today I prefer the Pilot G-2 0.7mm. The construction is plastic but decent quality for a disposable pen. The clicker and screw joint have excellent fidget properties. The ergonomics are good except for the injection nub on the rubber grip, and the ink is the best I've found in a cheap disposable today. In the 1980's I preferred Uniball pens. Back then they had unreasonably high construction quality for a disposable p…

The G2 05 used to be my pen of choice but within the last few years I've noticed the ink tubes dry out and become unusable long before they actually run out of ink.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#126

Post by GloriousKoji »

analog31 wrote: post #119

My biggest peeve is pens that dry up or stop working. So I propose a category, "best pen for finding in your glove compartment." Is there a particular type that's better than the others?

I have a Fischer CAP-O-MATIC space pen which I've have longer than all of the cars I've owned. I think I bought some time around 1996. It hasn't been used frequent enough to need a refill but it's never failed to write. The only problem is a small bit of ink will crust up on the tip which you can wipe off or just accept a dot where you first placed the pen down on paper.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#127

Post by jerlam »

anononaut wrote: post #42

I use a multipen, a pen with multiple ink cartridges that can switch on the fly. Just like the one you had as a kid! I use four colors plus black for my day-to-day engineering journal. I use the colors for semantic highlighting. By default, I write in black. People, teams, and customers are in blue. I also annotate some things with blue arrows and words. Dates and very important notes are in red. Projects and tickets…

Multipens are very underrated, especially when they're all using the same new technologies as the better gel and ballpoint pens.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#128

Post by 3523582908 »

polygotdomain wrote: post #100

I always feel that fountain pens should come with bigger caveats than they're typically presented with. I absolutely love them (more than you'd even guess), but if someone is just going to "pick up" a fountain pen and just start writing they might be in for a bit of shift. Writing with a fountain pen isn't really the same as writing with a ball point, and there will be some adjustment that goes along with it. If you'…

One con: Pens dry out! If you're not regularly writing with them, the vast majority of pens (minus the Platinum ones) will dry out.

Yes, my 20 year old ballpoint pen has dried out. But the vast majority of my ballpoints, gels, etc pens can all be picked up and written with without any regularity. My fountain pens have to be used daily, otherwise they cannot be used.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#129

Post by jerlam »

3523582908 wrote: post #128
polygotdomain wrote: post #100

I always feel that fountain pens should come with bigger caveats than they're typically presented with. I absolutely love them (more than you'd even guess), but if someone is just going to "pick up" a fountain pen and just start writing they might be in for a bit of shift. Writing with a fountain pen isn't really the same as writing with a ball point, and there will be some adjustment that goes along with it. If you'…

One con: Pens dry out! If you're not regularly writing with them, the vast majority of pens (minus the Platinum ones) will dry out. Yes, my 20 year old ballpoint pen has dried out. But the vast majority of my ballpoints, gels, etc pens can all be picked up and written with without any regularity. My fountain pens have to be used daily, otherwise they cannot be used.

If you have to use a fountain pen daily, there might be something wrong with the sealing mechanism on the cap. I've had fountain pens that sat unused for a week but still wrote fine.

But if the fountain pen stops writing, it can be cleaned and refilled with ink, and they're as good as new.

The gel pens that I haven't used in several years and have dried out - they're mostly fit for the trash can.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#130

Post by just_testing »

polygotdomain wrote: post #117
huimang wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the cons. - Traveling and shaking a vessel filled with ink doesn't end well. - Getting ink on your hands when refilling the pen becomes annoying, quickly. - Your notebook choices now become limited to ones that don't bleed. I already have notebooks that I've been using for years and don't want to change. - Not all pens are suited for every language. If you get a pen with a wider nib (like a parker or american on…

I don't disagree that those are potential cons, but it also highlights how much versatility you can have with a fountain pen. For instance, there are ones that travel very well with shutoff valves to prevent ink leakage. There are options for filling that can all but eliminate getting ink on your hands. Nibs can be tuned and ink choices can align with what paper you write on, so you don't absolutely have to change th…

Wow! I've never heard of a pen with a shutoff valve. Could you please share some recommendations?
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