Big Pilot Pen Review.

Pilot and the good folks at Shoplet sent a nice box of pens and markers from Pilot pen for review recently. Some I’ve tried and loved, and the Frixion gear has been on my list. The apex is the huge pack of Pilot Be Green Dry Erase Markers, eco-friendly markers from the beloved BeGreen line!

First, the tried and true, the Pilot G2 Gel Roller Ball Pen. I have used these pens somewhat consistently since fall 1998. They always write. The colors are vivid; and the black is BLACK. They are comfortable to use. They are easy to find and not expensive to replace. I love them. I have heard calls to change the design of the body, but why? They are the #1 selling gel pen in the USA for a reason. The black review pen was as black and smooth as a G2 ever was. It was stolen in short order, by someone who said that I have “enough” gel pens (!). Certainly, the G2 isn’t perfect. A little liquid goes a long way toward a huge mess, and the black takes quite a while to dry. Still, I think it’s a good trade.

Next, I’d only recently come across Pilot’s latest US offering of the B2P (Bottle To Pen) line, the Pilot B2P Recycled Ballpoint Pen. The ink is as nice as Pilot’s ink always is, and the pen itself is very comfy to hold. It’s solid, with an unobtrusive grip, and the blue tint makes it feel less like it used to be a water bottle and more like a simply attractive pen. To add to its GREEN credentials (and Pilot ought to make this connection for folks), the pen is made in the USA, i.e., uses less energy to get to your pen cup. Also, as an aside, this pen led me to seek the other colors, which, I am happy to report, are equally nice.

I’ve been wanting to try some of the erasable gel pens in the Frixion line, and Pilot sent over a Pilot FriXion Point Erasable Gel Pen. Writing with it feels like writing with any other gel pen, albeit with a little less vibrant pigment. But this pen is erasable! Heat, produced by friction, makes the ink disappear somehow. The friction is created by means of a little plastic (?) round doohicky on the non-business-end of the pen.

Now, I’m a pencil fan also. And I have never really understood the allure of erasable ink. It seems to have all the faults of a pencil (smeary, impermanent, faint) and all the faults of a terrible pen (skips, too much pressure required) all rolled into one stick. The Frixion rights very very well, though, with a good dry time, no smearing and a nice smoothness. So, I thought, let’s try it on some crosswords. No go. The Frixion’s erasures are a balance between keeping the ink on the paper and not requiring ten minutes to erase it — and also completion of erasures. What I mean is that the Frixion erases as completely as the best pencil eraser can. But it requires way more rubbing, and way more time, than pencil erasers. As a result, the newsprint of many crosswords is no match for the “eraser” on the Frixion since it takes so long to erase. In normal situations, the erasing is fine, not marring the paper at all. And the ink is gone, long gone. I’m super impressed, really.
The Pilot Frixion Lite Erasable Highlighter feels just like any other highlighter to me, but I can erase it! Granted, I was unable to make paper look like I’d never pigmented it with fluorescent ink. However, it did erase better than anything else, even good highlighting pencils, whose wax doesn’t actually erase as well as graphite pencil. It’s a great tool, and I expect my better half to steal mine before this review is published.

Now, I don’t pretend to have a lot of experience with dry-erase markers. This is because I hate them. They dry out. Their felt points spread out. And I’ve never understood why companies don’t just make them all more broadly-tipped so as to be seen from afar. I suppose it could be that the points would spread out and dry out even more quickly. Then, because these danged things don’t last very long, they get tossed, and they are made of virgin plastic. They seem wasteful, and I’ve always stuck with “china markers” — grease pencils.

But these Pilot Be Green Dry Erase Markers are different for a number of reasons. The tips are BROAD and firm, and they are not prone to drying out. Also, the pens themselves are made of recycled plastic, and you can refill them a few times — REFILL a marker! These markers have changed my opinion of dry-erase markers, to be sure. Next time I have a need for sharing on a wipe-off board, it will be with these markers, not soft grease pencils.


My opinions of erasable pens and dry-erase markers have both been changed as a result of this nice review package. Thanks again to the fine folks at Shoplet and Pilot!

(Disclosure: I did not get paid to write this review, but I did get this box of free pens. This review originally appeared on another blog I had a few months ago.)