Latest Update: Added our Lamy 2000 review.

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• Related Pages: Mechanical Pencils, Pens That Are Art.

There’s almost no end to the variety of different types of pens available. Most people are familiar enough with ballpoints, rollerballs, gel pens and marker pens, and at least know about fountain pens and dipping pens. If you want to know a bit more about what the differences really are between those types, see our article on Pen Types.

On with the pens…

Pens by Type

Ballpoint

A paste of ink, using dye for colouring.

• Rotring Quattro Data Pen: four ‘pens’ in one. The individual tips can be changed, but can include different colour ballpoints, highlighters, PDA styluses, and a .5mm mechanical pencil.

Rollerball

Similar to a ballpoint, but using liquid ink. Flows more smoothly, but slower to dry.

• Frixion Erasable Rollerball: Have Pilot finally cracked the challenge of a pen you can erase? Plenty of others have failed, and even Pilot have had at least one poor attempt at this before.

Gel Ink Pens

Pigment ink in a water-based gel. Usually good strong colours (can even draw light colours on black surfaces), and available in metallic and even glitter ink varieties.

• Pilot G-Tec C4: a needlepoint gel pen, good for drawing very thin lines. Popular with people who like to write small, especially when trying to cram a lot into small bits of paper.

• Cross Ion: a dumpy little gel pen, with an unusual design. Nice and short when closed, but extends when opened.

Marker Pens

Also known as felt tips, a fibrous tip sticks out of the pen at one end, and dips in the ink at the other.

• Sanford Sharpie: The classic marker for celebrities everywhere – will let you sign autographs on just about anything – including body parts. If you need them, your agent will get you some. (Actually, they’re great marker pens that draw on any surface, with quite a good solid black.)

Fountain Pens

Liquid ink in a tube inside the pen feeds to the nib, and flows down a crack to the tip. Bad fountain pens can be quite awful, but a good fountain pen is a wonderful thing to use. If you’re thinking about it, we have some advice on choosing a fountain pen, and we also have a page on fountain pen maintenance and repair.

• Lamy 2000: minimalist Bauhaus design German piston filler.
• Lamy Safari: not the prettiest fountain pen around, but I like the simplicity of it, and it works amazingly well. One of the best ways to get into fountain pens – if you find anything cheaper, it won’t write as well.
• Parker 45: first sold in 1960, the Parker 45 has only gone out of production in 2006 – not a bad history for a pen. Is it really that good?
• Pilot Birdie: The fountain pen that fits in a Filofax pen loop – surprisingly cheap, too.
• Pilot Capless and Capless Decimo: Known as the Vanishing Point in America, these are the only retractable fountain pens around – just click the button on top, like a ballpoint. Very good quality pens, too, with great nibs.
• Pilot Parallel Pen: like a fountain pen, but the ink flows between two plates rather than down a split nib. Good for very thick lines – extra-wide calligraphy. Can even mix colours.
• Pilot V4: a disposable fountain pen. Not great, but not bad at all, and certainly cheap enough.
• Rotring Skynn: one of the strangest looking fountain pens around, but it’s a great nib, and a comfortable grip.

We also have a page on fountain pen inks.

Technical Drawing Pens

A slightly different category to fountain pens – they’re almost the same, but the tip is a round tube, not a split nib.

• Rotring Isograph: Probably the all-time classic tech-drawing pen. Very precise, and nice to use, but the ink tends to feather unless the paper is right, and it’s not the easiest pen to look after. Not cheap, either. Still, it produces the most perfect black lines of any pen I’ve used.
• Rotring Rapidoliner: Now out of production, the Rapidoliner was line an Isograph without the work. The only problem was that you had to replace almost the entire pen when refilling – the only part that made it non-disposable was a plastic sleeve the slid over the refill, and the cap.

Technical pens need careful cleaning every now and then – scripto continua has written a bit about it, which may help: Technical Pens and Cleanliness is Next to Rapidographness.

Dipping Pens

Just a nib that you dip in a bottle of ink. Not much use in day-to-day life, but enables artists to use types of ink that can’t flow through a fountain pen.

Pens by Manufacturer

Cross

I quite like the way Cross manage to keep a reputation as a quality pen maker, whilst at the same time trying so many new things.

• Ion – a dumpy little gel pen, with an unusual design. Nice and short when closed, but extends when opened.

Lamy

One of the few pen makers to remain independent. Lamy make some great designs, and concentrate strongly on simplicity. No fancy patterns and engravings, just simple plain lines. Their Safari is one of the best value fountain pens around, and the Lamy 2000 is a design classic.

• Lamy 2000: minimalist Bauhaus design German piston filling fountain pen.
• Safari: not the prettiest fountain pen around, but I like the simplicity of it, and it works amazingly well. One of the best ways to get into fountain pens – if you find anything cheaper, it won’t write as well.

Parker

Parker was one of the great American pen makers. Now, it’s a brand owned by Sanford, as with so many others. Strangely, though, many of the pens are still made in the UK. I love my Parker 45, and even their cheap fountain pens are surprisingly decent. If you fancy a vintage fountain pen, Parkers have almost got to be in your shortlist somewhere – most likely in the form of the classic Parker 51.

• Parker 45 Fountain Pen: first sold in 1960, the Parker 45 has only gone out of production in 2006 – not a bad history for a pen. Is it really that good?

Pilot

Although Pilot are mainly known for their cheap and reliable gel pens, they make quite a range, up to fountain pens costing thousands of dollars under the Namiki brand. Their cheap disposable G2 gel pen is one of the best loved pens in the world.

Naming

Pilot use fairly standard names for their pens, so you can often tell a lot about a pen just from the name…

• V means their ‘V’ system for ink delivery, used in their liquid ink pens. These pens are mainly rollerballs. The ink is fed through a series of fins, which are usually visible inside the grip section.
• Tec means a needlepoint pen, where the ballpoint tip is at the end of a fine tube.
• G means gel ink.

Pens

• Birdie Fountain Pen: The fountain pen that fits in a Filofax pen loop – surprisingly cheap, too.
• Capless and Capless Decimo: Known as the Vanishing Point in America, these are the only retractable fountain pens around – just click the button on top, like a ballpoint. Very good quality pens, too, with great nibs.
• Frixion Erasable Rollerball: Have Pilot finally cracked the challenge of a pen you can erase? Plenty of others have failed, and even Pilot have had at least one poor attempt at this before.
• G-Tec C4: a needlepoint gel pen, good for drawing very thin lines. Popular with people who like to write small, especially when trying to cram a lot into small bits of paper.
• V4: a disposable fountain pen. Not great, but not bad at all, and certainly cheap enough.
• Parallel Pen: like a fountain pen, but the ink flows between two plates rather than down a split nib. Good for very thick lines – extra-wide calligraphy. Can even mix colours.

Rotring

Rotring was a great German pen maker, with some very popular technical pens. They’ve been bought by Sanford, and their future is a bit uncertain at the moment. The Core is said to be a great value fountain pen, if you don’t utterly hate the looks (I do), and the Rapidoliner and Isographs are some of the most popular drawing pens ever.

• Isograph: Probably the all-time classic tech-drawing pen. Very precise, and nice to use, but the ink tends to feather unless the paper is right, and it’s not the easiest pen to look after. Not cheap, either. Still, it produces the most perfect black lines of any pen I’ve used.
• Quattro Data Pen: four ‘pens’ in one. The individual tips can be changed, but can include different colour ballpoints, highlighters, PDA styluses, and a .5mm mechanical pencil.
• Rapidoliner: Now out of production, the Rapidoliner was line an Isograph without the work. The only problem was that you had to replace almost the entire pen when refilling – the only part that made it non-disposable was a plastic sleeve the slid over the refill, and the cap.
• Skynn Fountain Pen: one of the strangest looking fountain pens around, but it’s a great nib, and a comfortable grip.

Sanford

Most of Sanford’s pens are sold under other brands they own (Rotring and Parker, for example), but they also make the Sharpie under their own brand. From recent changes in the packaging, they might be trying to reposition ‘Sharpie’ as another brand – the name ‘Sanford’ is getting harder to find on the products these days.

Uni-Ball is not part of Sanford – Sanford are their distributors in the US and Canada.

• Sanford Sharpie: The classic marker for celebrities everywhere – will let you sign autographs on just about anything – including body parts. If you need them, your agent will get you some. (Actually, they’re great marker pens that draw on any surface, with quite a good solid black.)

Uni-ball

Uni-ball is the Mitsubishi Pencil Company, (not connected to the Mitsubishi group of companies, which connects the other companies that are called Mitsubishi and a few others). In the US, Uni-ball products are distributed by Sanford.

Surprisingly, we’ve not actually written any reviews of Uni-ball products, but they do make some very nice pens. The Vision Elite is a favourite of many people, and the needlepoint Eye is a great narrow tipped rollerball, quite similar to Pilot’s Hi-Tecpoint. The PowerTank is also notable – a disposable pen with pressurised ink, so it can write upside down.

Related

• Fountain Pens: A Place to Start: Fron Metropolitan at D*I*Y Planner. Nice article for anyone new to FPs.
• PenReview.com: A site dedicated to reviews of pens. Read the reviews, add comments, and even add your own reviews. You can earn points for reviews and comments, and the first user to reach 100 points wins a Montblanc ballpoint. One small point – they claim copyright of anything you submit, all rights reserved – not much of an issue for comments, but it would put me off writing any reviews.