I saw these pens when I went into Staples the other day and couldn’t resist. They were colourful and used the words “Extra Bold” on the packaging.
Plus, I’ve used the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner series of pens with success in the past. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with these. Unfortunately, these pens were somewhat of a letdown.
First, I didn’t much care for the grip or its location. I like the pens which allow me to grip close to the nib, and these did not. Plus, the (I assume, ergonomic) grooves were oddly placed and too narrow; maybe someone with small hands wouldn’t have a problem.
Next, the pen has issues both with posting the cap and recapping the pen. When posted, the cap wobbles and although it’s secured, it feels like it might fall off. Then recapping the pen can be a pain in the butt because it’s not actually recapped until you hear the click and getting to the click requires a bit of patience and strength…of course, the grip gets in the way.
But those detriments could be overlooked if the ink quality and flow were above par. Unfortunately, not the case. The pens need to be started on a scrap piece of paper, and as far as flow goes, sometimes the ink wants to flow too much, leaving splotches, and sometimes it wants to flow too little, stopping completely. Those splotches tend to be visible on the other side of the paper, and at worst, completely bleed through (especially black).
As far as the colours go, the black is nice and deep, and so is the blue. Surprisingly, I loved the richness of the red (I tend to like few red pens). I never much cared for teals, so I’m ambivalent about it here and I wish the green were a bit darker. Purple was bright without being overly bright. My main problems were with the orange and pink (which should be clear from the writing sample above)—both of those colors seemed washed out and far too pale.
The line thickness is nowhere near as bold as the packaging would have you believe. For me, it’s only slightly thicker than the line a medium point (0.7-0.8mm) pen would produce.
But these pens aren’t completely worthless. I had fun doodling with them, so they’d make great journaling and block writing pens.
