Zebra Tapli Clip Ballpoint Pen 1.6 mm Blue Review

I love my micro tip pens but I do get asked from time to time to review pens on the opposite end of the spectrum. With a 1.6 mm tip size, the Zebra Tapli Clip Ballpoint is waaay out there compared to what I normally use.

How does a pen like the Tapli stack up to some of my favorites? Not very well. It is not just that it has a wide tip that I don’t care for it - if a pen is a good pen I will say so - it is that the performance is poor regardless of the tip size.

The ink is very messy when writing with the Tapli. You can see several blobs of ink on the page even in the smaller size photos. It is consistently bad, and the 1.6 mm tip actually made it worse because there was so much ink coming out of the tip. There was even some bleed through to the back of the page which I have only seen one other time with a ballpoint.

Once you cross the 1.0 mm threshold you really need to temper your expectations. There is only so much good that a tip size that large can do. Yes, it will be very smooth and probably dark, but the ink flow might also be unmanageable.

Do you have a ballpoint, gel, or rollerball pen 1.2 mm or greater that consistently works well for you?

Sailor Clear Candy Fountain Pen Review

I have been talking a lot about entry level fountain pens lately I wanted to discuss another recent acquisition: the Sailor Clear Candy. It was recently introduced to celebrate Sailor’s 100th anniversary and comes in 15 different barrel colors with eight colors of ink cartridges. I chose the clear black body and orange ink cartridges for something a little different. I have a thing for translucent barrels and always like to see a splash of color inside instead of boring old black.

Once I snapped the ink cartridge in the fine nib began writing immediately. The nib itself is a little scratchy compared to the Lamy Safari and even the Platinum Preppy. It writes very clean and sharp but I am wondering if I need to break it in a little more to get a smoother feel.

The orange ink is a nice touch. It comes out light when still wet on the page but dries into the great shade you see in the picture. The barrel is nothing to write home about. It is a basic plastic design with few frills other than some nice logo work, which I enjoy.

The Sailor Clear Candy lies in the middle ground between the Preppy and Safari in both quality and price. If you are looking for a decent entry level fountain pen that offers a little more than the basics then you should check this one out.

Stabilo Bionic Worker Roller Ball 0.5 mm Review

Do you have a brand of pen that you think is great looking and great feeling but there is something a little off that throws you for a loop? Stabilo is that brand for me. I keep coming back to them because they make a great looking pen but there is one thing that consistently makes me shake my head: their tip sizes are not based in reality.

I have mentioned on several occasions that tip size and line width are two separate measurements. The tip size is the physical measurement of the tip of the pen, while the line width is the width of the ink line on the page. For example, an 0.5 mm gel ink pen often leaves a line wider than 0.5 mm on the page, while an 0.5 mm ballpoint leaves a narrower line. Each brand has their own little intricacies that I have come to expect, but Stabilo blows them all out of the water.

The Stabilo Bionic Worker Roller Ball is marked on the barrel as an 0.5 mm pen. With a liquid ink pen such as this, I do expect a wider line than a comparable 0.5 mm gel ink pen, but this one is really wide. This is a line width I would expect from an 0.7 mm or 0.8 mm pen at the least. I should have been tipped off when I saw the word “Medium” on the back of the barrel. I have never seen an 0.5 mm pen marked that way.

This is a consistent experience across all Stabilo products I have tried but don’t let my rant dissuade you from what is actually a very good pen. I compare this pen to the standard Uni-ball Vision pen, and the Stabilo may be even better. If you like a wider line in your liquid ink pens then you should give this one a shot. Just don’t go in expecting fine lines.