Posts filed under Pen Reviews

ystudio Brassing Ballpoint Pen Review

Founded in 2012 in Taiwan, ystudio is a brand I started seeing pop up in my various feeds only within the past year. They create simple, timeless stationery, primarily from brass. The few products they focus on would look wonderful on any desk, which is why you may have seen them picked up by several design magazines and blogs.

KOHEZI of Amsterdam asked me if I was interested in checking out the ystudio lineup, and the Brassing Ballpoint jumped out to me as a must try. It features a solid brass barrel with a black coating that can wear down over time, or be helped along a bit with the included sandpaper. It ships with sandpaper? Yes it does.

I wasn’t aware of that at first, thinking any wear pattern would form over time. I didn’t even notice the sandpaper when I first open the box either, but once it fell out of the included insert I thought “Aha! This will be fun!”

And fun it is, but before I get to brassing it up I have to say this is an excellent writing pen regardless of any additional features. They weight and balance of the brass barrel is great, and the hex style is wide enough to give you a comfortable grip between ridges when writing. The refill is exposed by twisting the end cap into the barrel where it stays put due the additional threads and spring on the mechanism. And it looks cool to boot.

The refill it ships with is the Schmidt P-900, which is about as good of Parker-style ballpoint refill as you can get. The black lines are clean, smooth, and dark. The entire setup is a joy to use.

But let’s get to that sandpaper! It is extra fine 600 grit, which is all you need to quickly remove the black from the ridge peaks to reveal the underlying brass. I went for the area around where my fingers grip the pen at first, then added a little shine up towards the top rear of the barrel. My first pass was simple, and it looked great.

For this review I wanted to go a little further and push what I could sand off. Trying to get the flat areas between the barrel ridges to shine proved to be a much tougher challenge. I could remove some of the black off, but I’m far from a full brass ring around the grip area like I was hoping for. I was really pushing hard too!

I can get it there I’m sure, but it looks pretty cool as it is right now.

All in all, this is a very good pen and is priced fairly at around $77 for a full brass barrel. It works well, feels great, looks fantastic, and has the added touch of allowing you to make it your own. I look forward to checking out what ystudio is up to in the future.

My thanks to KOHEZI for sending me this pen at no charge for the purposes of this review. Maybe I can talk them into sending me this cement barrel rollerball next!

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Posted on June 27, 2016 by Brad Dowdy and filed under ystudio, Pen Reviews.

Schon Dsgn #01S Tumbled Stainless Steel Pocket Pen Review

I first came across Ian Schon and his beautifully designed pens during what was then called The Pen Project on Kickstarter. For a reason that escapes me now, I didn’t back it. Now that I have had the #01S Tumbled Stainless Steel model in my hands for a while I am regretting not getting on board sooner. Sorry Ian!

What Schon DSGN brings to the table is a portable, pocketable pen will a full-sized writing experience. The body of the pen is made from your choice of metals, including aluminum, brass, bronze, stainless steel, and titanium. Stainless is the most recent addition to the lineup, and the pen Ian graciously sent me to review.

Stainless steel is known for its strength and durability. Those features also come with a price: Weight. This is a heavy pen. In fact, it is too heavy for me when posted. That said, with my writing grip and the design of the pen, it is long enough to write with comfortably unposted, which I do about 95% of the time. The other 5% I pretend like I can write comfortably with the barrel posted on the back of the pen, but I just can’t.

I carried the 01S daily for a couple of weeks and found myself reaching for it constantly. If I wore nylon shorts I did notice the wight of the pen in my pocket, and it did bounce around a bit. With cotton or other heavier fabrics I found it settled in nicely. This pen would be the ideal pocket pen for jeans.

Another hangup may be the fact that to access the refill you need to remove the set screw in the end of the barrel. This is a non-issue honestly. The Fisher Space Pen refill it uses will last for months with regular use, meaning you will rarely need to get into the barrel. And when you do, the screw removes easily with a screwdriver, coin, or back of a knife blade as I did.

If you are interested in this pen and were asking me to make a recommendation, I would say try the aluminum barrel models first, likely the black one. The weight won’t come as a shock, and you still get the same high-quality pen. If you are a stainless steel fan, or are looking for a heavier pen, I would absolutely recommend this model, or either of the brass or bronze models if you like to see wear and patina on your pocket pen.

You can’t go wrong with small batch, American made manufacturing in my book, and that is what Ian Schon has brought to the table with his Schon DSGN pens. My thanks to Ian for sending this pen to me at no charge for purposes of this review.

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Posted on June 20, 2016 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Schon DSGN, Pen Reviews.

Uni Style Fit Meister Multi Pen Review

Earlier this year, I started using a Uni Style Fit multi-pen to plan and track my work for different projects in a Leuchtturm notebook. I wrote a review of the multi-pen shortly after, stating that the gel refills were some of my favorites. While that was certainly true, I wasn't a huge fan of the standard plastic barrel that I chose to house the refills. Luckily, there's a more "premium" barrel option that features metal materials and a twist mechanism as opposed to the three knock switches that make a lot of noise.

And just like that, the Uni Style Fit Meister became the perfect work log solution for me. The refills are top-notch, and I finally have a barrel to match.

Everything about the original review still holds true when it comes to the refills. These are probably my favorite multi-pen refills. They're incredibly smooth and reliable even at the 0.38mm size. And, surprisingly, they last a long time. I'm getting about 3-4 months of daily use out of these refills. I'm a big fan of them, and I hope you check them out sometime.

The new member of this multi-pen family, however, is the Meister body. This classes up the format from "art tool" to "business pen" for me. The metal adds some weight in all the right places to improve the feeling in the hand while writing, and it looks great in the process. The metal is shiny and catches fingerprints like nobody's business, but it's easy enough to clean. If there were more color options in the lineup, I certainly wouldn't complain.

That being said, I really love the gunmetal color I chose. It looks great and feels nice when writing.

Another improvement over the cheaper body is the refill selector method. In the plastic model, there are three knock-like switches that you can depress to use a certain color refill. On the Meister, you twist the body to roll through the 3 refills. For me, this is a huge improvement. I love how smooth the movement is, and I also like that it's quieter than the plastic model. The mechanism feels great for the price, which is saying a lot.

Even though the body is metal, there's a clear window midway up the pen that allows you to see the refill colors. The "active" color lines up directly with the clip, which makes it easy to see what color you can expect when you start writing. It also makes it easy to rotate and select the color you want. The window is a bit small, so you might have some trouble seeing the colors clearly if you're using similar colors. For me, it's really easy to differentiate between blue, green, and orange.

The clip isn't exceptionally strong, but it gets the job done. It's designed to be slim to match the overall aesthetic of the pen, so that might explain why it isn't overly strong. Still, I've never had any issues with it coming undone once it's clipped to something.

One of the things I haven't taken advantage of with this pen is the ability to add a mechanical pencil unit. This isn't possible with the cheaper plastic model, but the Meister incorporates a click mechanism to advance the lead. You only have the option of 0.5mm lead size for this unit, so keep that in mind if the mechanical pencil is something you'd use in this pen.

I have no problem saying that this is my favorite multi-pen to date, and it gets used every day to plan and track my work day. The Meister body improved the experience by adding a better design and feel to an already useful instrument. Definitely try out the refills, and also keep in mind that the Uni Style bodies also work with the Pilot Acroball multi-pen refills (if you prefer those to the Uni refills).

The Uni Style Fit Meister is available from JetPens in a variety of colors, and keep in mind that they don't come with any refills — you need to buy those separately!

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on June 15, 2016 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Uni, Style Fit, Multi Pen, Pen Reviews.