The Best Pen (2015)

Personally, I do not like what I refer to as "fat" pens. My favorite pen is a slim model ball point made years ago by Paper Mate. They no longer make it. At its widest, it is not much bigger than a standard number 2 pencil (it's narrower than a Fisher Space Pen). All of the larger, "ergonomic" pens I have ever held remind me of the twice as thick pencils used in pre-school and kindergarten when I didn't have the fine motor skills to hold the smaller pencil - maybe okay back then, but not what I want now.

I'm a fountain pen aficionado, but I have various troubles with fountain pens that mean it's not practical for me to carry them around. (In particular, if I insist on carrying them upright in a pocket or the pen-loop of a notebook or messenger bag, somehow I always end up breaking off the clip. But if I just dump them in a pocket of a bag, then they're not upright, and they leak into the cap.) So what I want is a pen that performs more or less like a fountain pen, but without the inconveniences. In particular, it needs to write with a smooth, wet line, and never skip or require pressure to write, and it needs to not leak if just dumped in a bag.

The Jetstream does not meet my needs because it writes like a ballpoint. It puts out a thin, dry line, and requires some pressure to write.

The best pen I've found for my needs is also from uni-ball, however. The uni-ball Vision Elite is the rollerball pen that comes closest to the fountain pen experience for me. After that, the next choices would be either a group of gel pens: the uni-ball Signo, or the Pilot G2. Neither is quite as fountain pen like as the Vision Elite, but they're both quite reasonable.