Sailor Professional Gear Imperial Head On

So the other day I shared a review of the Sailor Professional Gear Imperial with you which is the all black fountain that even has all black metal accents and nib.  For me, the all black look is always something that I like, so the first half of the review focused more on the looks of the pen itself, and today we will take a look at the actual writing experience.  Just as a reminder, this pen was purchased from our friends at Goldspot with a slight bloggers discount.

Sailor Professional Gear Imperial fine Nib Writing Sample on Doane Paper

This pen has an extra fine nib which for a Japanese fountain pen is actually really narrow as compared to nibs from other European manufacturers.  The above writing sample shows a comparison of the Sailor Professional Gear Imperial Fine Nib next to multiple Gel Ink Pens and Ballpoints ranging from .18mm to .7mm as well as some other non-Japanese Extra Fine fountain pen nibs.

Personally I thought that the Pilot G-Tec-C was the closest of the bunch to the writing experience as compared to the Sailor Professional Gear.  They both laid down similar width lines, and both had a similar silky smooth feel as they glided across the surface of the paper.  The Sailor Professional Gear is a very nicely balanced pen and it is comfortable in the hand to grip which makes it fantastic for even the longest of writing sessions.  I managed to use it to take about 4 pages of notes the other day at work and not once did I find any discomfort or fatigue with the pen.  Obviously some of the smooth writing experience can be chalked up to good quality ink and paper, but even having tried this pen on a few different papers and with one other ink, the writing experience remained very impressive.

In the writing sample above you can see that even when flipping the pen over and writing with the back of the nib, it laid down a very clean and consistent line.  Often if you write with that side of the nib on a fountain pen, the line breaks a bit and you get a very scratchy feel.  Definitely not the case with the Sailor Professional Gear Imperial.  Just like with the front side of the nib, its very smooth and very consistent…mind you not AS smooth as the front of the nib, but still impressive.

Many people on lots of the pen related blogs and message boards that I read talk about two different things that I think this pen addresses:

1. Fine and Extra Fine fountain pen nibs are inconsistent across manufactures – Now while this is a true statement, it is easy to see that it is geographically related in that Japanese pens tend to have more narrow nibs in comparison to their European counterparts.  For a close comparison, click on the photo above and you can see that the EF nibs on both the Lamy Studio and Pelikan M205 are both noticeable wider than that of the Sailor Professional Gear Fine nib.

2. Fine nibs are scratchy – While this generally comes down to a personal preference, I don’t feel this nib as being any different than the Lamy Studio or Pelikan M205 that they were compared to above.  Now this doesnt mean that you might not think they are still scratchy, however it is just a relative comparison to the two.  Quite honestly I wish this pen came in an EF nib beccause for how smooth it is, I can definitely see going down even one more size and probably not suffering any degradation in the writing experience.

Overall this is a fountain pen that is going to be a staple in my rotation for a long time to come.  In addition to the pure good looks of this pen, it just writes like no other fountain pen I’ve used before, and it comes the closest I’ve seen yet to that super narrow line that I enjoy getting from my sub .5mm gel ink pens.  If the money isn’t an issue, I honestly cant imagine why someone would not absolutely love writing with the Sailor Professional Gear Imperial.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.