The Solid Aluminum Pen and Stylus Standard Length and XTS

A few weeks ago we reviewed the Solid Titanium Pen and Stylus from Big Idea Design, and they were kind enough to send up these aluminum versions to check out next.  In addition to this review, we will also be doing a giveaway later this week of both the standard aluminum version and the XTS which is the shorter version you see here, so be sure to check back in for that.  If you can’t wait for the giveaway, feel free to head on over to the Big Idea Design website and pick up one of these pens for yourself though.

Solid Aluminum Pen and Stylus and Titanium Version Clips

Visually the titanium and aluminum versions of these pens look almost identical, if you ignore the fact that I happen to have different colors of them.  The only real difference besides the color is the periodic table style emblem laser etched onto the clip of the pen to indicate whether it is the titanium or aluminum version.  The most notable difference when you hold these in your hand though is that the aluminum version is much lighter, and according to the Big Idea Design website its actually 35% lighter than its titanium counterpart.

One thing I noticed in terms of the functionality of the pen is that the threaded caps on the aluminum versions seem to have fewer threads than the caps on the titanium version.  The titanium version takes about one and a quarter to one and a half turns to fully open or close it, while the aluminum version takes only about one full turn to do the same.  Personally I like the slight extra bit of rotation required to open/close the pen, but at the end of the day I didn’t notice anything good or bad other than personal preference in this department.

One thing I was very curious about with the aluminum version was to see if it was still a bit top heavy to write with while the cap was posted.  I found that the weight of the titanium version along with the slightly long body made for a top heavy feeling in the hand which is a bit tiresome for a long writing session.  With the lighter aluminum version the experience was better, but still slightly top heavy in the hand, which I can now attribute more to the actual length rather than just the weight of the material used in the pen body.

Solid Aluminum Pen and Stylus Modified Pilot Precise Refills

Something that I came to learn which is not specific to just the titanium or aluminum version is that with some ink cartridges there might be a need for minor adjustments still.  For example, one of my favorite refills, the Pilot Precise V5 RT was actually fitting in the body perfectly, however the tip was pressing up against the inside of the cap just slightly which caused the tip to accumulate a bit of ink on it.  Simply pulling out the plug on the back of the refill and cutting it down by about 1/8″ made it so that this problem was averted.  You can see in the image above that the refill on the left is the one that I cut down and the one in the center is the full size version, with the one on the left being a mini Pilot G2 refill that fits snugly in the XTS version of the pen.

Speaking of the XTS version, it measures 3.93″ as compared to the 5.35″ that the full size version comes in at.  Weight wise, the full size aluminum version is .913 oz (the titanium version is 1.34 oz) while the smaller XTS version is only .687 oz.  Personally I like the heftier titanium version, but they both feel pretty comfortable to write with and are very well constructed, so again it just comes down to personal preference.  I did find that the XTS version is much more evenly weighted with the cap posted, so if you are someone that does a ton of writing in one sitting and likes to post the cap on your pen, the XTS may be for you, although the refill situation will be a bit trickier.  My suggestion for those that like the mini XTS version is that they should just use their favorite refill in the pen it originally comes in until the ink gets low enough that it can be modified as I did with the Pilot Precise V5 RT refills, although you will have to use more of the ink so it gets low enough that you can trim it down.

If you missed the original review, I listed all of the refills that work with the pen, as well as my own testing of what refills I found definitely did not work with the pen, so I’ll share them here again as a reminder:

Pen Name/ Refill Names that DO fit: •Bic Velocity Gel 0.7mm (Medium) •Cross Gel Rolling Ball Refill 0.7mm •Dong-A Fine Tech RT Pen (GRC-43 refill) •Duke Rollerball Refill (Medium) •Faber-Castell Ceramic Rollerball Refill 0.5mm •Foray (Office Depot’s Brand-USA) Replacement Refills •Mont Blanc Fineliner Refills •Mont Blanc 163 Rollerball Pen Refills  (M) & (F) •Monteverde Rollerball Refill (Mont Blanc Style Replacements) •MUJI 0.5mm Refill •Ohto Ceramic Rollerball Refill (C-305P, C-307P) •Pentel ENERGEL BLN105 pen (LRN5 & LRN7) •Pentel HyperG Retractable KL257 Series (LR7 & KLR7) •Pilot Frixion Ball pen BLS-FR5 (LFBK-23EF-B refill) •Pilot Ge (America’s #1 selling ink gel pen, 0.38, 0.5, 0.7, &1.0mm) •Pilot G2 Pro •Pilot G6

•Pilot Hi-Tec-C Cavalier (Same performance as Hi-Tec-C, but with more ink) ****

•Pilot Precise V5 RT/V7 RT, named Hi-tecpoint V5 RT/V7 RT in Europe •Pilot Q7 Needle Point Refill 0.7mm (BLS-GCK-7 / LHKRF-8C7) •Pilot V ball RT (BLS-VB5RT) •Pelikan Roller Refill 338 Rollerball •Schmidt Safety ceramic roller 888 Fine •Schneider Topball 850 •Staples Classic Grip Pen 0.7mm Gel (#31581) •TUL GL1 Gel Pen Retractable Needle Point Fine 0.5mm •Uniball Impact RT 1.0mm Bold (Signo UMR-80) •Uniball Signo RT Gel 0.38mm & 0.5mm (UMN-138) •Uniball Signo (UMN-152) •Uniball Signo 207 Gel Refill 0.7mm (UMR-87, UMR-85) •Uniball Jetstream 1mm (SXR-7) •Visconti Rolling Ceramic 0.7mm (AA40) •Waterman Rollerball Refill •Zebra Sarasa Clip Pen Refill

•Zebra JF Gel Ink (JJ2; JJ15; JJZ15; JJ21; RJF5 pens)