Pilot Juice Pens Review

June 14, 2015

PILOT JUICE PENS REVIEW

 

For stationery addicts, finding the perfect pen can be hard. We love ourselves some pretty looking ones, but then we get frustrated when they get all scratchy, run out, or bleed through the page like a permanent marker. I’d heard of a few people using the Pilot Juice pens, and loved that they came in 0.38mm, and 0.5mm (I really don’t like writing with anything bigger than 0.5mm). I was also frothing over the Zebra Mildliner Highlighters (review of those beauties to come), and for $20 shipping I wanted to get the most out of my order from Tokyo Pen Shop as I could. So here is my opinion on what is possibly, my most favourite pen!

The Ink and Pen Tip

The Pilot Juice pens are a gel pen, but are so wonderfully designed that the ink doesn’t rush out of them so much that you get a big globby bit of ink at the start of each word, nor do they decide to stop halfway through a letter. Instead, they provide a perfect stream of beautifully coloured ink. It really is juicy.

Pilot also gives you quite a selection in the size of the pen tip, so it caters for people who love the ink stream nice and thin, or a little more thick. The sizes available are: 0.38mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 1.0mm. As aforementioned, I love anything with a super fine tip, so I purchased the pens in 0.38mm, except for plain blue (0.5mm). My logic behind this? I do all my main writing in blue ink, so I didn’t want to risk the 0.38mm pen tip being too scratchy. The rest of the colours are for headings, formulas, etc. to make things stand out, or for use in my planner to make it that little bit more attractive to look at. And I’m happy my logic was correct! Some of the 0.38mm pens are great, however two of them really feel like they are digging into the paper. It doesn’t affect the flow of the ink, it just feels strange – and I’m all about the feeling of how a pen writes. I find my 0.5mm blue excellent to write large bodies of writing with. Here’s a sample of how they compare:

Comparison of Pilot Juice 0.38mm and 0.5mm Pens

The ink is quick drying – about a second later and you will get little-to-no ink smears. According to some people, the ink is also somewhat water resistant, but I’m not game enough to test that out right now. Also, unlike Pilot FriXion’s – they won’t fade in the heat, which is perfect for a lot of us Aussies!

The Beautiful Colour Palette

The colour palette available for the Pilot Juice is above most other brands. They’ve got 20 colours available in the basic range, but they have also released a “metallic” range, and a “pastel” range – both of which I’m definitely wanting to try. I skipped out on the typical black and red colours this time ‘round, as I never really used them much in my study. I wanted things to be pretty. And these pens are just that! Take a look at my writing samples for the colours I have. My favourites are coral pink and green!

Sample of the Colours/Ink

Pen Appearance

The pen body is a clear and somewhat torpedo shape, with a rubber grip and a clip up the top. It looks just like an average pen. The rubber grip isn’t too rubbery either (yes, that’s a thing – some pen grips are just too rubbery and don’t feel right). It’s very comfortable to write with, as the diameter of the pen isn’t too wide that your fingers feel like they are trying to write with a carrot, or so thin that your writing fingers struggle to fit on the barrel.

The clip has a spring mechanism so it can clip over thicker objects (like more sheets of paper or a thicker material

Clip (without being opened)

The not-too-rubbery grip:

The Comfort Grip

Comparison to Staedtler Triplus Fineliner

Another pen I know a lot of people love to use (I’m one of them, too) is the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner. I find the Pilot Juice pens are not as easy to write large bodies of information with, purely because they do have a scratchy feeling (however this is easily solved with the 0.5mm pen tip or thicker). The Pilot Juice pens also shadow/bleed through much less than the Staedtlers as well, so you are safe there. The Staedtlers do have a thicker ink line, and are a felt-tip pen rather than gel tip. This means that they are much easier to see than the Pilot Juice pens, but Pilot just has such a better selection of colours, I think! The light green of the Staedtler is much easier to see than the Pilot Juice, as the image below shows. However the purple colour is beautiful in both brands (and there are more purple and pink selections in the Pilot Juice as well).

Staedtler Triplus Fineliner vs Pilot Juice (Green)

Staedtler Triplus Fineliner vs Pilot Juice (Purple)

Bleed through and shadow test in the Erin Condren Life Planner

Shadow and Bleed through test in the Erin Condren Life Planner (the Staedtler shows through much more than the Pilot Juice)

In summary, this is definitely one of my favourite pens. The colour selection makes colour coding and studying much easier, but in general is just brilliant to write with. Unfortunately, these are not available for purchase in Australian stores, however can be found on various ebay stores, or from Tokyo Pen Shop (who I love to buy from).

What’s your favourite pen brand? Or is there a pen you’d like me to review? Leave a comment below!

– G

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