Sharpie Pen S-Gel 0.7 mm Pen Review

Back to School season often brings new pens to the store shelf. While Sharpie’s newest entrant, the S-Gel, has been around for months, only over the summer did we seem them infiltrate the stationery world at scale.

I grabbed a 4-pack of 0.7 mm pens from Amazon (two black gel, one each of blue and red,) to test, but if my grocery store shelves are any indication, you should be able to easily find them in the 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm tip sizes as well. Sharpie’s new Roller is also available as part of the big push we are seeing from the brand.

As many of us pen addicts already know, and as Sharpie is about to find out, the long-time stalwarts of the gel pen section of the store occupy that space for a reason. The Pilot G2, Uni-ball Signo, and Pentel EnerGel are household names, so Sharpie has their work cut out if they want to displace any or all of that trio.

So how does the Sharpie S-Gel stack up against some of the best gel ink pens of the past decade? Not very well.

The worst thing a pen can be is inconsistent, and that is what I am getting from this batch of pens. The black 0.7 mm is especially poor, with a nose cone I can feel scratching the page as the tip rolls across it. This makes for a scratchy, wide line, and a poor experience.

The blue gel pen is the antithesis of the black. In fact it is quite good and reminds me of the Pilot G2, which is a good experience to shoot for. The red gel pen is close to the blue - a little more scratchy, but nowhere as bad as the black.

With the variance I am seeing between the three colors and how they feel on the page, I would be hesitant to recommend these over any of the three excellent choices I mentioned above.

Being under the Sharpie umbrella gives these pens a leg up in marketing, but the performance isn’t there. I think the style is lacking a bit as well. I understand that making a great $2 gel ink pen at scale is difficult, but how about letting loose a little bit?

Sharpie doesn’t hesitate to do that with their permanent marker lineup. How about bringing some of that aesthetic into the gel pen world, instead of designing a pen that looks like every other pen it is competing against? Or maybe design something completely different and off the wall. We already have what they are trying to sell us, and better versions at that.

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The Five Best Tools for Outlining Your Next Novel

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

Not every writer outlines, but many do--especially if there's a deadline involved. Outlining is very much a discovery process and employs just as much creativity as the writing itself. Sometimes the brainstorms involved can be messy. So what's the best way to keep those ideas roped into a useable order? Some proper stationery tools can help. Everyone's process is a bit different, so ymmv.

A good notebook. For my outlining, I usually use a slim book that becomes my planning, research, outlining, and editing guide for the whole project. That's a tall order, so it must be durable. It needs to last for years! My current one has been in use for two years and five months. Grid rule is ideal, if not essential. It allows you to easily level your indents for different sub headers. I prefer fountain pen friendly books, even though not every page will have fountain pen ink. My favorites so far have been the Graphilo and the Midori MD. Both have just enough pages for their purpose, while still being easily portable. I can slip the notebook in behind the back cover of the journal I'm writing the book in and carry them as a set.

A set of color-coding pens. It's very handy, when outlining, to be able to color code your notes. Whether it's by setting, character, timeline--all of these in conjunction... You may need only a few colors or a LOT of them, depending on the scope of your project. I would suggest a basic set of black, blue, red, and green at the very minimum. You can find those colors within many brands. But if you're penning an epic legend that spans generations of warring houses, you're probably going to need a set with more variety. I prefer gel pens, as it's easier to find large and varied sets with that ink type. My favorite ones to use are the Pilot Maica because of their bright colors, excellent flow, and fine tips that allow me to add notes to margins easily without cluttering the pages too much. Pilot Juice, Uni-Ball Signo, and Zebra Sarasa Clip are also excellent choices. You could use an array of fountain pens all inked with different colors of ink, also, but I found that the difference in line width between pens added some confusion to my notes. For example, pens that wrote more boldly seemed to be emphasized in the text when that information didn't necessarily need to be emphasized. Consistency of line width can be an important factor in keeping outlines tidy. Which brings me to my next point.

A bold pen for headers. When you're scanning your outline for important information, it can be very handy to have important key words and headers written boldly, so they're easy to find at a glance. Character names, places, themes, or scene headers might be good candidates for this. I use either a thick-tipped fineliner in black, like the Sakura Pigma Micron, or a fountain pen with a stub nib to add a bold emphasis to those notes. Either works, but try to stick to the same tool and color throughout, for ease of scanning.

Notecards. Writers love to follow outlines, but characters rarely do. Sometimes seeing the structure of your book on paper isn't enough. Sometimes whole scenes need to move or the plot structure needs to be adjusted. To do that, I recommend making a brief additional outline on notecards (sticky notes work, too) and spreading them out where you can rearrange and shuffle them as needed. Any scrap of paper will work, but my favorite tool for the job are the Nock DotDash note cards. They're fountain pen friendly and have a grid pattern on them, so they work great for mini scene outlines.

Highlighters. Even with color coding and bolding, you're likely going to need another level of emphasis. Maybe to highlight (literally) plot twists or foreshadowing, themes or critical character development. Highlighters are the classic best tool for the job. I don't care much for the typical marker-style chisel-tip highlighters. They do work, but too often I dislike the way they bleed through paper or smear ink. Neon colored pencils are good, but aren't as quick, since it takes some scribbling to cover an area, instead of one swoop. My favorite tool for the job are the Staedtler Textsurfer Gel highlighters, which are basically super-soft gel crayons. You can highlight in a smooth swoop, and the soft wax doesn't bleed through paper or smear ink. One downside, though, as the wax makes it impossible to write over that area again at all.

And of course, the non-stationery ingredient to this list is flexibility. Outlines are the best example of the "guidelines not rules" adage. You're in charge of your story and you can change your mind anytime. Make your story work for you. And if your outline isn't fitting, change the outline! I have three outlines for my current novel, where the story trajectory changed and I needed to re-route things. Maybe add some scissors and scotch tape to this list, too. And a glass of wine.

Tell me your favorite tools for planning your writing projects! Everyone's method is a little different, and I find them all fascinating.

(JetPens provided these products at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Tuesday Toolset, Top 5 Micro Gel Ink Pens Edition

Lavender Black, my favorite DX ink color.

Micro-tipped gel ink pens are the reason I started The Pen Addict in 2007. Once I discovered that I could get gel ink pens in sub-0.5 mm tip sizes, my mind was blown. I won’t say that I’ve tried them all over the years, but I bet I’ve come close. Needless to say, I have thoughts on the best of the bunch.

1. Uni-Ball Signo DX 0.38 mm - It’s so good that I helped design an upgraded pen barrel for it. What more can I say? (Buy)
2. Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.4 mm - I think you can argue for several pens in the two-spot, but the Sarasa Clip is consistently good, and a joy to use. (Buy)
3. Pilot Juice Up 0.4 mm - The standard Juice has been on this list forever, but the Juice Up is better than the original in every regard. (Buy)
4. Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3 mm - If you can put up with frequent inconsistency and finickiness, then the Pilot Hi-Tec-C will provide you the sharpest fine line on this list. (Buy)
5. Uni-ball Signo RT1 0.38 mm - Signo 307 or Signo RT1, that is the question here. I like the 307 barrel better, but the RT1 has many, many more colors available, and that wins out in the end. (Buy)

(Notes: In my dream scenario, Pentel kills off the Slicci lineup, and adds a sub-0.5 mm refill to the EnerGel lineup. Preferably, in the barrel they refer to as the Euro Needle. Do that, and it would be the number two pen in this list I believe.

My personal use ranking:

1. Uni-Ball Signo DX 0.38 mm
2. Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3 mm
3. Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.4 mm
4. Uni-ball Signo RT1 0.38 mm
5. Pentel EnerGel Euro Needle 0.35 mm