A bit of extra disclosure as we get into my review of the new Pentel GlideWrite Ballpoint Pen. I have a friend that works at Pentel of America, and the story of my first experience with the GlideWrite involves him directly.
It was at the 2019 San Francisco Pen Show, and my friend mentioned he had a game he wanted to me to play called the GlideWrite Challenge. The idea was a simple one - it was a blind writing test to pick the smoothest ballpoint pen. He loaded up several generic barrels with popular refills. Pentel’s GlideWrite and RSVP were included, along with the Uni-ball Jetstream, Pilot Acroball, and I think maybe the Fisher Space Pen. All refills were 1.0 mm black refills to make them as comparable as possible.
I took the handful of pens, broke out a Nock Co. note card, and began scribbling. Since I’m telling you this story, you likely already guessed how it ends. Yes, I blindly picked the GlideWrite as the smoothest pen out of this group. And if memory serves, only the Jetstream was even close. The rest were clearly down the smoothness list.
Now, smoothness alone does not make for a great pen. It’s mandatory to start there - a scratchy pen will immediately be dismissed - but in this market, it can’t end there. Are there additional properties in the ink that set it apart? Is the barrel well built, and comfortable to use? In the case of the GlideWrite, the answer is yes to both of those questions.
Pentel markets this ink as TechniFlo, which is a way to describe its low-viscosity properties. This makes the GlideWrite ink thinner than traditional ballpoint inks, which is a good thing. Thick ballpoint inks make a mess on the page, and on the tip of the pen. There are no such problems here.
The barrel itself is solidly built, and comfortable to hold. There is no rattle in the knock, or at the tip of the pen, and the grip feels good between your fingers. Now, is this design my style? Not particularly, but I also understand that this pen isn’t designed just for me. This is a mass market pen which will appear on retail and big box store shelves around the world, and I think it is perfectly designed for that.
Writing-wise, I’d be hard pressed to ask for more. The lines are smooth, clean, and consistent - with one exception I’ll mention below. What’s interesting is that in the sample packs Pentel sent me, there were no basic black, blue, or red colors included. That’s awesome! Good quality, easily accessible, out of the norm, ballpoint ink colors are hard to find. As best as I can tell, Pentel will be bringing out a cool dozen colors in the GlideWrite lineup, with additional barrel styles for standard black and blue.
My pack contained Purple, Pink, Sky Blue, and Green ballpoint pens. Out of that group, I found the Pink and Sky Blue lines to be the most solid and consistent. Purple was close, but did show a fraction more white space in the line than the previous two, possibly because it is darker. Green was the clear outlier, and not on the good side. It was almost like it was a different ink than the rest, in that it was far lighter (less saturated) and had much more white space in its lines. My expectation is that it should be in the ballpark as the others, and it wasn’t. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this with a green ballpoint pen, so maybe its just difficult to get that color right.
At around $1.50 each, the price is right for Pentel to be able to gain some shelf space at the office supply store. They have a huge challenge going up directly against the Uni-ball Jetstream, but the GlideWrite at least gives them a chance they never truly had with the RSVP. I hope it works well for them, because nothing is better for us as consumers than a little competition in the marketplace.
(Pentel of America provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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