Product Review

Without exaggeration, my favourite ballpoint pen of any brand, model or specification. For anything short of running a 7-page imaginative context piece for my English exam, its balance between writing feedback and smoothness mated to a crisp, fine line is perhaps unbeatable. Maybe I'm just having an economy-pen streak lately but I've even been using this in preference to my 'high grade' models of various pens. For $2.25 it looks very sleek and professional.

As with all Jetstreams, the ink is much more vibrant than a typical ballpoint, particularly in blue. I find the black feels inferior to gel inks from Hi-Tec-Cs and Signos, but the blue has a nice color to it and a shade that makes it seem nothing like a second-rate compromise.

The retractable feature makes it nice and portable; the grip is neither too hard nor too soft. Most importantly of all, unlike with some of my fine-pointed Japanese gel pens, it has absolutely no trouble writing on rougher paper, whereas I feel my Hi-Tec-Cs and the like suffer unless I'm writing on high-grade notebooks. Signo DX, Signo RT, G2, thus far no pen has given me this level of performance (although I still prefer gel pens if I have quality writing material for the deeper colors).

If you know a better all-round pen for this kind of price, I'd really like to know.