Testing low-end, affordable pens

So, I'd like to get some thoughts on my recent experiment.

TL;DR -- It turns out that I think ballpoints are technically the smoothest pens, while pens that are popular probably are popular less because of smoothness and more because of a combination of smoothness and wetness, since wetness contributes more to a distinct, solid line.

I'm a long time fountain pen user, and almost all my work is done using fountain pens. I decided that I wanted to compare and test some of the classic low-end ballpoints, gels, felt tips, and rollerballs to see not only how they compared to fountain pens, but also how they compared with each other.

I have seen a lot of the various discussions online about the best this or that, so I tried to pick up some of the most renowned from a local stationery store and see what was what. I came away with some mixed thoughts.

I wanted to explore specifically a question of ergonomics and the feel of each pen. Since the feel of the pen, and its handling in the hand is a bit more subjective, I'll leave that out, but I spent a lot of time exploring how each pen actually felt on the page. I wasn't happy with just the term "smoothness", so I decided to consider the following factors:

• Glide -- The actual amount of effort required to move the pen across the page while producing a line with minimal pressure of the pen downwards.
• Feedback -- The amount of vibration and changes in overall sensation are felt while writing, such as scratching or vibrating or other things related to feeling surface to surface features through the pen.
• Wetness -- The relative amount of ink laid onto the page and the liquidity of that ink while the pen is in the process of writing the line, independent of how quickly it dries after the pen has made the mark.

Here are the pens I tested:

• Bic Cristal 1.0mm
• Papermate Flair Medium Point
• Papermate Write Bros. 1.0mm Medium
• Papermate Inkjoy 1.0mm 100RT Ballpoint
• Papermate Inkjoy 0.7mm RT Gel pen
• Papermate Profile 1.4mm Ballpoint
• Parker Jotter, Quinkflow 1.0mm Ballpoint
• Parker Jotter, Quink Gel 0.7mm
• Pilot G2 0.7mm Gel
• Pilot Precise V7 Rollerball
• Sharpie S-Gel 0.7mm
• Sharpie S-Gel 1.0mm
• Uniball Jetstream 1.0mm ballpoint
• Uniball Vision 0.7mm
• Uniball Zento 0.7mm Gel

I picked these because they represented a pretty wide range of classically known pens that have a long history and might be considered some of the "Hall of Famers" in the pen community as far as I can tell. They were also almost all available locally and easily. They cover a wide range of product categories, as follows:

Standard Ballpoint:

• Bic Cristal
• Papermate Profile

Low viscosity Ballpoint:

• Parker Jotter Quinkflow
• Papermate Inkjoy Ballpoint
• Uniball Jetstream
• Papermate Write Bros.

Felt Tip Pen:

• Papermate Flair

Gel Pen:

• Papermate Inkjoy Gel
• Parker Quink Gel
• Pilot G2
• Sharpie S-Gel
• Uniball Zento

Rollerball:

• Pilot Precise
• Uniball Vision

Here's how they stacked up:

Glide (Least resistance to highest resistance):

1. Write Bros.
2. Inkjoy Ballpoint
3. Jetstream
4. Quink Gel
5. Inkjoy Gel
6. Vision
7. S-Gel
8. Precise
9. Zento
10. Papermate Profile
11. Flair
12. Pilot G2
13. Quinkflow ballpoint
14. Bic Cristal

Feedback (Least scratch to most scratchy):

1. Write Bros.
2. Inkjoy Ballpoint
3. Papermate Profile
4. Quinkflow ballpoint
5. Bic Cristal
6. Jetstream
7. Inkjoy Gel
8. S-Gel
9. Quink Gel
10. Zento
11. Precise
12. Flair
13. Pilot G2
14. Vision

Wetness:

1. Vision
2. S-Gel
3. Precise
4. Pilot G2
5. Inkjoy Gel
6. Quink Gel
7. Zento
8. Flair
9. Jetstream
10. Inkjoy Ballpoint
11. Papermate Profile
12. Write Bros.
13. Quinkflow ballpoint
14. Bic Cristal

So, my conclusion from these results, if we consider that smoothness is a combination of low feedback and easy glide, then, a surprise to me, the Papermate Inkjoy and Write Bros. pens are actually the smoothest pens I tested.

But what these pens are not is highly wet.

While the most popular pens on this list are praised for smoothness, I don't think this is actually quite absolutely true. If it were actually smoothness that people were chasing, then the Papermate options would be more highly praised. Not that they don't get their fair share of attention, but they are usually not considered to be "as good" as some of the higher priced options from Japan or things like the Sharpie S-Gel.

I noticed that the wetter the pens wrote, the more likely they were, in general, to have a little more feedback. The wettest pens actually wrote a little more roughly and the nibs would catch on to the page a little easier than the drier ballpoints. The ever popular gel pens mitigate this a little bit, due to their increased viscosity. Thus, the most popular pens seem to be the ones that achieve reasonable smoothness but are particularly wet in their category.

As an example, the Jetstream is almost always the number one pick for a ballpoint in most categories, but when I tested the pen against other ballpoints in this test, it was noticeably less smooth. However, it also wrote a noticeably darker and more consistent line. It also had relatively little drag, or, in other words, good glide.

Rollerballs, in my testing, could be reasonably smooth, but the very wet liquid ink meant that there wasn't a lot of cushioning, and so you felt the ball and the socket of the pen much more than you would with other pens. The advantage of gel pens is that they cushion this feedback a little more, resulting in a generally smooth feeling experience that is quite "juicy" as some people like to say. Their achilles heel, in my experience, has always been their consistency. They tend to be subject to strange and temperamental skipping or blobbing in ways that can be somewhat unpredictable. This could make them messy. Rollerballs tended to be more consistent in this respect.

For myself, I'm willing to put up with more feedback, but I strongly prefer bold, wet lines, and I like very good glide. Thus, I can appreciate the low viscosity ballpoint for its easy flow across the page, but the line that a ballpoint makes is just too fine and timid for me to consider it desirable. This is why, when I have tried various types of pens in the past, I have often gravitated to rollerball pens, since they tended to write very wetly and usually had less drag than traditional ballpoints, while being more consistent than gel pens.

So, among these pens, which were my favorites? Well, I found that I liked the S-Gel a lot, because it wrote one of the wettest lines and also had a broad tip that could put down even more ink. It was reasonably smooth, but I am quite biased towards wetness. However, even then, I actually found that I was most drawn to the Parker Quink Gel refill, which has very good glide, a little feedback, and a pretty decent, but not extraordinary wetness. I think in the end it is the color on the page and the degree to which I can control the flow of ink from the Quink gel that makes it among my favorites, though I think I might technically prefer the feeling of the S-Gel more.

But, I found the Papermate products the most impressive. While I have seen some love for their products, the impression online is generally that they are a fun low-end option with good colors, but not necessarily the best writing experience. On the other hand, in their segments, I found the Inkjoy Gel, Inkjoy Ballpoint, and Write Bros. options to easily be superior to the default in those categories (Pilot G2 and Bic Cristal, respectively). I'd even say that the writing experience on the Inkjoy and Write Bros. exceeded that of the Uniball Jetstream on just feeling. The Inkjoy comes closer in terms of line quality, but the Jetstream still beats it.

Finally, the Papermate Flair is one I can't quite decide on. I love the look of the pens, and they are quite nice to write with, but I can't figure out if I actually like them or not.

Edit with more data: In another interesting result, I stress tested all the pens by doing rapid, long, vertically compressed, horizontal Z's on a piece of printer paper all the way down the page continuously to see if they could maintain ink flow. I know that only the wettest fountain pens are able to come even close to handling this (and most skip a little bit).

The Write Bros. again took the cake for the most consistent, with no skipping and only slightly thin lines in some areas. The other ballpoints all stopped writing entirely in some portions or had greatly reduced lines. The more traditional feeling ballpoints like the Quinkflow and Cristal (which are both technically low viscosity) both had large regions where they stopped writing all together until the ink in the reservoir could catch up.

The gel pens all had mixed results, and definitely struggled to keep up, with various skipping or loss of line definition. The Inkjoy Gel, S-Gel, and Quink Gel came in first, second, and third, respectively, but they were so close to each other that they are almost the same, with the rest doing significantly worse.

The rollerballs were quite mixed, with the Pilot V7 struggling a lot, and the Uniball Vision acing the thing with flying colors.