petermorwood: vr-trakowski:petermorwood:Best pen, no. Best GEL pen? Definitely. TL:DR - the Pilot G-
petermorwood: vr-trakowski:petermorwood:Best pen, no. Best GEL pen? Definitely. TL:DR - the Pilot G-2 is an excellent pen - reasons follow. (NB, the Zebra Sarasa looks just like it but IMO does not work just like it. YMMV.)*****I’ve used Zebra and Pentel gels; on occasions both dried and needed a scribble-start, or skipped, or went faint. Pilot gels, in all the colours I’ve used (bring back Hunter Green, dammit!) and configurations I’ve owned - mostly discontinued and now hard or impossible to find, also dammit! - have never done any of that. It’s significant that the G-2 refill will fit a lot of other pens whose manufacturers you might expect to be a bit dog-in-the-manger about using their refills and nobody else’s. Pilot’s rep seems to be Just That Good. Here’s one of those discontinued configurations: Gel-X had the same thumb-push operating system as the standard G-2, but was a bit thicker overall and with a wider grip section that - for me, anyway - made it more comfortable to write with, especially during long sessions. The G-2 Pro is its apparent replacement, but I haven’t seen them for sale in Europe and I don’t need one anyway, since I was able to nab a few Gel-X’s from eBay when they started getting hard to find. That turned out to be a smart move. I wish I’d been as smart with this:It was the G-23 Luxury, an understated elegant bit of kit which looks more expensive than it cost (£5.95 from CultPens back in 2007) and was a lovely pen to write with, the closest to a fountain-pen of any non-fountain-pen I’ve handled so far. It not only took standard Pilot gel refills (off to a good start already), the pen’s steel body / aluminium cap construction gave enough extra weight that I only needed to guide it over the page, without needing to press down. Like I say, more a fountain-pen than a ballpoint. I’ve seen reviews that took exception to its asymmetrical cap, for instance this: …there is a notch in the barrel that a matching point on the cap has to slide into like a puzzle piece to get the cap on securely. This is endlessly frustrating to me, because I am used to just popping the cap on and going. With this pen, I have to pay attention more to what I am doing. The horrors! If presumably-adult reviewers still need Mummy to hold their hand while crossing the road, that’s their problem not mine.Its replacement is the Pilot Metropolitan gel rollerball: I have one but (a) it looks, feels and until uncapped IS annoyingly similar to its fountain-pen sibling and (b) seems to have been discontinued, which suggests that someone at Pilot though the same.I lost my shiny sleek G-23 in 2017, went looking for a replacement, found that it too had been discontinued (Pilot do this a lot, it’s annoying) so went to eBay… And then left again after finding the only one available was £59.95 + £19.95 for shipping. Uh. Nope.Once again and as usual, it’s always the good stuff that gets lost; I’ve still got the couple of £1.49 still-in-production G-2s I bought at the same time as the G-23. They’re still going strong and have been refilled many times. But only once with Hunter Green. Dammit… May I counter with the Pentel Alloy RT? It takes Energel refills, which come in multiple point sizes and at least four colors, and that’s the smoothest ink I’ve ever used. The pen is an aluminum alloy, so it’s heavy enough to feel sturdy, and the picture doesn’t do it justice; it’s really a lovely thing. One of my colleagues saw mine and demanded I give him a link for them, and I have to keep an eye on mine so they don’t wander off. It feels like a much more expensive pen than it is. I have four. I’ve got one, and its matching propelling pencil.Though I second that the pen itself is a handsome piece of kit, it’s also the one I mentioned earlier. It skips, needs scribble-started, right now it’s stopped completely despite a near full refill, and as something to write with rather than just admire, it leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve had the same problem with three successive Pentel gel refills, so either the ball or the ink is the source of the problem. If I could use a reliable G-2 refill instead, the Energel would be an excellent pen, but there are small yet definite no-fit differences between them which I suspect are meant to prevent just such a swap.Pentel top, Pilot bottom.IMO Pilot are missing a bet by not having an equivalent metal click-to-use pen.They did, but only sort-of. It was just a metal version of the plastic one, nothing like (IMO, anyway) as good-looking as the Energel. A quick look suggests that its sale has been discontinued * in Europe, it seems to be “stock limited” in the USA, and $30 to ship a $12 pen across the pond doesn’t work for me.( * What is it with Pilot and discontinuing good stuff? I’m still narked about it happening to the Birdie fountain-pen. And the G-23. And Hunter Green, dammit.) -- source link