Review: Bic Triumph 730R

Sakura Grosso GelI've never been a fan of the Bic line of pens.  The barrel design of the majority of the gel and liquid ink pens you find on the shelves is nice enough to tease you into to buying the pen, only to get it home and have it perform terribly.  I've done that dance time and time again, until finally giving up on them altogether.  But the packaging and barrel design of another Bic pen caught my eye while strolling the pen aisle in Target a few weeks back, so I hesitantly grabbed a two-pack of the Triumph 730R and set off to be disappointed again.  But I wasn't - not even remotely.

The 730R is a very pleasant writing experience.  It may be blasphemous, but this pen is very comparable to the Pilot Precise V line, which is high praise indeed.  Bic has mixed things up a bit with this pen by jazzing up the design, and making it refillable.  Some info from BicNews.com:

Like the 537R model, the BIC Triumph 730R roller pen is refillable and comes in either a 0.5 mm or 0.7 mm point, and offers the same ultra-smooth writing system.

“The barrel design is unlike anything on the market, with a streamlined tapered end with silver imprints which give the pen an ultra-premium feel,” added Lacasse.

The 730R also features a contoured grip area for comfort and control, a chiseled silver clip, a refillable ink cartridge, and an ink window.

Sara ran across this pen in her many adventures and liked it also.  If you are looking for a well designed, smooth writing needle tip liquid ink pen, then you could do a lot worse than the Bic 730R.

Click Here for the XL review.

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Brad Dowdy.

Battle Royale: Pilot Hi-Tec-C Putimo vs. Pilot Pockel

Uni-Ball Hard LockTwo Pilot mini pens - only one will survive.  Who will make it into the backpack to be loved, and who will find themselves in the desk drawer to be lost?  Let's find out!

I have reviewed both of these pens in the past in black ink - the Putimo here and the Pockel here.  I love them both and they both have a lot to offer.  But I carry enough pens around as it is, and I wanted to cut down how many mini pens were in my backpack, so I needed to decide.  The first step, of course, is to order new ones of each in different colors.  That's what any normal person would do when they had two perfectly good ones previously reviewed, right?  RIGHT!

The next step was to compare them side by side, which is shown at left (as always, click on the image to see the larger view, and click below for the really big picture).  They both write great, and in the end, the Putimo wrote a cleaner line and was more comfortable to write with than the Pockel.  The only real issue with the Putimo - which is found in all Hi-Tec-C pens - is that it is sometimes a slow starter.  I left the perfect example of what I am talking about on the page where I wrote "Pros".  That crops up from time to time, even with the cap on, but the end result is nice enough for me to overlook it.

The Pockel is a fantastic mini pen, but the Putimo is the one for me.

Click Here for the XL review.

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Brad Dowdy.