(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
If you're reading or studying to the point of eye strain every day, then pastel highlighters are a godsend. When my eyes are exhausted and there are many chapters to go, the last thing my vision needs is searing neon. I've become a huge fan of softly colored highlighters since returning to school, and these Stabilo Boss Pastel Highlighters are perfect for study time.
This 4-color set includes Breezy Blue, Dusty Gray, Frozen Fuchsia, and Pale Orange. The colors are saturated enough to be easily visible on the page, but calm enough that they're pleasant to look at. The grey can be a little harder to see when highlighting on paper that is cool toned or photocopies that have shadows or static. It works well on plain, clean paper, though. The blue is my favorite, as it's the calmest while still being very visible.
The highlighter bodies are flat and wide, which makes them easy and comfortable to grip. The broad surface gives you excellent control for marking in straight lines. They have the classic chisel tip, which can be used to make broad lines, or rotated to use the tip for narrower marking. The bodies do have a lot of branding on them, including barcodes, but I'm less worried about the aesthetics of something as utilitarian as a highlighter. I go through them pretty quickly, anyway. But these ones last longer than most--the broad body packs a nice, full cartridge.
The cap snaps in place and removes easily with a bit of a twisting motion. The cap does not post, however, which is a bit of a bummer for a highlighter. And there is no clip, which is a bigger bummer. I tend to use my highlighters as bookmarks, but they need that clip to stay put. Still, what they lack in cap features, they make up for in good ink.
The water-based ink in these highlighters has some magic potion added to it that prevents the tip from drying out even with prolonged use. It does not get dry or scratchy even hours into studying. That's very useful, as it can be easy to zone out when reading and forget about the highlighter till you need it again. The flip side to this wet ink is that it doesn't work very well over handwritten notes. It does fine with printer ink or textbook pages, but it smeared quite badly over gel pens, rollerball, and fountain pen ink (which it actually partially dissolved). It only slightly smeared mechanical pencil. Because of this, I think of these as better for studying and school use, and maybe less useful for planners or notes.
This set of 4 sells for $9.80 on JetPens, and individual colors are available for $2.45. It's a very fair price considering how long these last. This set will probably last me half the semester by themselves, while a regular highlighter doesn't make it a week. If your tired eyes have big studies ahead, I definitely recommend these.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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