The Pilot Better Retractable Ballpoint Pen

Pilot says they have a Better Retractable Ballpoint Pen, and in my mind, whenever someone has to tell you how good they are it instantly raises a flag.  With the appropriate caution flags raised, I clicked the “Add to cart” button on Amazon for the Pilot Better Ballpoint Pen, and patiently waited for this “better” pen to arrive.

Pilot Better Retractable Ballpoint Pen Grip

The body of the Pilot Better Ballpoint Pen itself isn’t anything flashy or different from what we have all seen in the past.  It is a hard plastic, smoke colored translucent barrel, with silver accents for the tip, clip, and plunger.  The grip section which is made of the same hard plastic as the rest of the body has a series of tightly spaced ridges.  The pen feels very well balanced in your hand while writing with it, and the plunger mechanism is very firm and responsive with no extra play in it.

Pilot Better Ballpoint Pen Writing Experience.

The Pilot Better Retractable Pen Writing Sample

Writing with the Pilot Better Ballpoint Pen proved to be a fairly reliable and solid experience, however I did get some occasional and minor rattling in the tip when I wrote particularly fast with it.  It was not nearly as bad as what I’ve experiences with some other pens, but it was noticeable on a few occasions, so if you are sensitive to that, this might not be the pen for you.  The ink flowed smoothly for the most part, but as you can see in the above writing sample, there were 3 spots where the ink did get a little splotchy on me.  In my daily work use with the pen over the last few weeks, this was about on par for how frequently I saw any splotching like that so you could say it was a fairly infrequent occurrence.

I’ll give Pilot the benefit of the doubt on this one because I guess it really is a “Better Ballpoint” because it is better than many others out there, but they were right not to call this the “Best Ballpoint” which is a title that I think would be a little over optimistic in this case.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.