Sunday, April 5, 2009

Pilot Choose

The Pilot Chose pens intrigued me the moment I saw them on jetpens.com. The aesthetics of the barrel and overly large cap were pleasing. Jetpens has pictures of what I mean by this and not just the "myspace emo angle" version I posted above. I ordered these three colors on separate orders. You can see the ink samples below.

This was written on the slightly creamy colored paper of the Piccadilly, so keep that in mind when evaluating the colors. The Blue Black is my favorite color of the three. I think it is a good mix of blue and black, it isn't too much of one color. In this picture I think it comes off looking a little more blue than it really is on paper, so imagine it just a little more black color in in. The Gold is a very true gold color. In the picture it looks a little like a mustard color, but it is a little misleading. The Purple is very vibrant and the picture is true to what it looks like in real life.

I would like to try all the colors. The pens write smooth and don't run out so tremendously fast that you couldn't use them on a regular basis. I haven't notice a lot of skipping or drag even on copy paper. Even with the oversized cap I think they are a balanced pen and I don't experience any problems with the odd shape.

The main problem with these pens are the tips. They seem to collect ink and are very gummy. (For whatever reason, the Gold ink is fine and not gummy.) As you can see below, my hands are always stained after using these pens. I typically have ink everywhere.

This is my left hand, I am right handed, so I am not sure how I even got ink on that hand! Hazard of the job I guess.