Reviews of Black Pens

The art I currently do involves hand-drawing stuff that's going to be scanned. That works best in black on white (or, sometimes, black and another color on white). So I'm getting to have strong pen opinions. This page might help you out, I suppose, but it's partly also to help me remember those opinions when faced by a wall of pens and a blank piece of paper.

My Favorite Pens

Felt tip: Pilot Bravo!

Roller ball: Uniball Vision Elite Bold

Because of my eccentric needs, I'm never going to have a favorite normal ball point.

A Few Notes

Unless otherwise specified, I'm using the pens on paper or card; smooth surfaced, pretty highly sized. Bleeding is not usually a problem on these surfaces and performance on them doesn't tell you anything about performance on really slick surfaces (even vellum).

My scoring scale:

• 5: Get your hands off my pen! It's mine, and you can't touch it, because you might damage its gloriousness.
• 4: I love it.
• 3: I like it. I'd buy it again.
• 2: It was OK, but I wouldn't really want to do it again.
• 1: I stuck the pen in with the writing implements before finishing it.
• 0: I got rid of the pen before finishing it.

Pen Reviews

Marvy Gel Excel

Rollerball. Black, no width listed on packaging, but the pen says .7.

Nice deep black, good feel until the ink starts to run out, a real .7 line, maybe even wider than most, medium drying time. Unfortunately, runs out incredibly fast. Medium sized barrel, doesn't feel great in my hand. Call it a 2.5; I'm not going to buy it if I have better choices, but it makes a good line, at least.

Itoya PaperSkater SK100 Synergy

(Itoya makes or has made more than one pen called PaperSkater. Thus the overspecified name.)

Rollerball. Black, .7 (note that barrel color is not related to ink color on these).

Medium black, narrow line for a .7, good feel but sensitive to angle, which makes it skippy. Feels good in the hand, big round barrel, and bright blue is pretty, too. Ink is relatively quick drying. 2, because of skipping issues.

Pilot Bravo!

Felt tip, black, no listed width.

Good deep black, great feel, line width varies nicely with pressure, no bleeding or drying issues. Feels good in the hand (another big round barrel). The cap falls off the end of the pen when I'm using it all the time, though. 4.

Liquid Expresso

Felt tip, black, xtra fine point.

Good black, nice feel, no bleeding or drying issues. Not terribly fine for "xtra fine"; probably .5 mm. Still, fine enough to be mostly a line pen instead of an area pen. 3.

Uniball Vision Elite

Roller ball, tested multiple colors, bold (.8 mm).

Good black and vivid colors, smooth, drying about average for a roller ball, good hand feel. 4.

(Uniball makes a confusing variety of rollerballs. I haven't tried the Vision yet, having picked the Vision Elite not for its touted airplane performance but for the .8 width.)

Staedtler liquid point 7

Roller ball, tested black, superfine point (.3 mm).

Beautiful black black, area coverage great for a fine line, excellent feel, dries very slowly. 2, for drying performance; a wider tip might score higher.

Pigma Micron 08

Fine point felt tip, lots of colors but I tested black, .5 mm (yes, that's right, the ones with an 8 on them are .5 -- the ones with the 5 on them are .45 mm).

I expected to like these. For one thing, I'd liked all the felt tips I tried recently, and was beginning to feel like just a pushover, and for another, I've used and enjoyed the 005s (which are .2 mm). This pen scored a 0. I did survive doing an entire 4x6 drawing with it, but only barely. It leaked, the tip fuzzed up, it bled, it was unpleasant and unsatisfactory. It was nice and black, I'll give it that much.

Pilot VBall BG 05

Roller ball, black, .5 mm

I use these for writing pens all the time; they were on sale as "green" pens, apparently using recycled plastic. They're really only about a 3 as drawing pens. The black is passable but not as dark as some, and they are capable of doing both line and area. Unfortunately, that's because they put out so much ink they bleed if the pen sits still. They're a great fall-back point, cheap, easily available, and flexible, but in a perfect world I'd use something better.