![]() Smoothness: 3 | Smudging: 3 | Bleed-through: 5 | Feel: 3.25 | Looks: 4Īs we were assembling this list, we often discussed how different pens have different purposes. With the cap attached to the back of the pen, it feels as if the pen could tip out of your hand the pen (again, more like a tiny pencil) isn’t hefty enough to stay pointed downward in your hand. Because of this imbalance in the proportion of the cap to the pen itself, the weight-balance feels off, too. And holding onto the pen without the cap on the back makes it too short to use comfortably (it’s basically like holding a short golf pencil). It has a brass body that looks vintage in the best way - like a bullet, almost - but when you open the pen, you realize that the cap is longer than the pen itself. When capped, the pen appears to be rather short. I do like that the ink comes out uniformly with very little pressure. Still, the very fine point is great for neat, small writing, but not necessarily for everyday note-taking. ![]() It’s a ballpoint pen with an extremely fine point something I would normally like, but it feels like a very fine-point mechanical pencil - which is interesting considering the fact that the body of the pen looks like that of a wooden pencil. I really wanted to like this pen based on looks alone, but its performance is less than subpar. Smoothness: 2.5 | Smudging: 4 | Bleed-through: 4.5 | Feel: 2 | Looks: 4.5 Click here to jump to the top 80, top 60, top 40, or top 20, too. For devotees of a specific style, we’ve also noted which pens earned top marks within its type we’ve listed them as “Best in Category” and you may hit Ctrl-F, in case you’re specifically interested in our favorite felt-tip, ballpoint, rollerball, gel, or fountain pen. Winning out 9-3, our number one pick is - we’re confident - a crowd-pleasing pen. Still - we were left with some pens that had the same average score and the same smoothness rating, so we broke the tie by recruiting left-handed volunteers (we’re all righties) from the New York office to break the tie, as lefties are more susceptible to smudging.įinally, two pens earned perfect scores in testing, so to find our number-one pen, we put the two to a vote among our team, plus one of our volunteer lefties. ![]() If two or more pens ended up with the same average score, we broke the tie by looking at each pen’s smoothness rating, as we collectively found this factor to be the most important one. To standardize the writing surface, we asked each tester to use the pens on the same Muji notebook and averaged each pen’s scores across the five categories. Once we narrowed our list down to the very best, most highly recommended pens, we divided them up among the Strategist’s team of writers and editors (there are 11 of us) to be rated according to our five criteria. And if you disagree (or have a favorite we missed), share it in the comments - we just might test it when we update this list in the future. The finer the point, the scratchier it’s likely to be. One person’s beautiful pen might be no more than inoffensive to another. Some of us prefer a finer line and some of us a thicker one (even within the Strategist’s ranks, there is dissent). One note: A lot of what makes one pen better than another is completely subjective. The resulting list is a ranking of the top 100 pens, according to Strategist editors and writers. Then we called in and tested dozens upon dozens of gels, rollerballs, felt-tips, ballpoints, and fountain pens, and put them to the test. We consulted a panel of experts, picked through personal favorites, and mined our own pen coverage to determine the top contenders. Does it glide along the page, or does it drag? Does the ink flow in a smooth line, or is it unpredictable? Does the pen feel good or would note-taking cramp your hand? And how does it look? With so many varieties out there, from plastic ballpoints sold by the dozen to thousand-dollar fountain pens hunted down by collectors, we became determined to find the very best pens for everyday use. A small sampling of all the pens we tested.Īt its most basic, a pen has to do just one thing, but there are so many reasons to choose one over another.
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