In Search of Perfection | The Perfect Pen

for the longest time I've been looking for the perfect writing instrument the one pen or the one tool that I would bring with me all the time that checks all the boxes for everything I need but the truth is I haven't been able to find that I've been able to find really luxury items and things for special occasions that I love using and have a really premium experience with and I've certainly got my favorite pens when it comes to everyday things like writing morning Pages or um just getting all my notes out and and and marking things up I also have my favorite things if I'm sketching something if I have something that I want to capture down on paper or things that I just want to bring with me all the time that are maybe heart heavier Duty and can take bashing in my pocket but I've never found that single pen or that single thing that serves all of my use cases so I broadly think there's about six different areas that writing instruments can fall within and I think it's okay to have a favorite within each of those six I'm going to call out those six areas that I think that are most important my favorites within each of those and try and make some recommendations for you how's it going folks my name is Marcus welcome back to the channel if you're new here on this channel I like to talk about technology EDC and anything that can help you live a happier balanced more productive life so let's get started so the six different categories for the different pens or writing instruments that I think are available are budget friendly Basics everyday writers EDC everyday carry writers special occasion masterpieces desktop beaters speciality tools so let's start with budget friendly Basics so in this category these are the cheap versions The the pens that you don't mind if you lose they're less than $5 but they have to be Best in Class they have to be something that you really enjoy and I'll jump to the chase my top pick in this is the uniball I love this pilot uniball Vision micro it's the very fine point and I've written with these I think for more than 10 years so when you see the majority of my notes when you see me scribbling in my journal or my notebook here I'm actually usually using one of these during the day now I do make exceptions in the morning when I write my morning Pages I'm a little bit anal about having that with a fountain pen just because there's something magic about the feel but in general if you see me capturing notes or taking things down certainly if I'm taking things down my my pocket notebook that I carry with me all the time I'm using one of these uni balls you really can't go wrong with them they're very cheap they're like 2 and 1/2 to 3 and2 depending on where you buy them I buy them in packs of 10 in fact one of my drawers is full of these uni balls at the moment um and when I get down to like five left I buy another pack again cuz I never want to be without them I like them because you can see the ink that's left inside them they're see-through to the point where you can see how much ink there is the writing flow in them is very consistent they never Jam I've never had any problems with them um getting blocked up on me and I usually get L of use out of one of these I think the only area where these fall down for me is that one I mean it's in the budget friendly Basics so I wouldn't expect it to look premium but it definitely isn't a premium product you can tell it as a Buro when it's in your pocket sticking at the pock top of your pocket you would definitely not confuse it with anything other than a a a cheaper pen the second thing is the only place I've ever had problems with it is bringing it on planes I don't like using these on planes nor do I like using fountain pens because of the pressure that happens and I have had these leak all over my hands and fingers on the plane it doesn't happen every every time but it is one of the problems with this specific pen that I have seen places if you don't want to get one of those if you're looking for something that won't leak on a plane I think the two best are either the classic G pilot G7 or Pilot g07 this is a a thicker nib these are about 0.5 nibs on these this is a thicker nib I also love how this writes it's a gel type pen because it's gel it doesn't tend to leak it doesn't suffer from the same pressure problems on flights but sticking this in your pocket uh because it's a click top sometimes it clicks down in your pocket I prefer having a lid on it which is why I go for the pilot another honorable mention is the pigma Micron 05 even though it's called the 05 it says that the nib tip is actually 045 mm so a nice fine felt tip on the top of it I really like these I'm not a I don't press heavy when I write these don't get Bend and I use these probably more for sketching than I do for writing but also a lovely writer so my budget friendly pick the uniball takes the lead which brings me on to the everyday writers now the budget friendly pick for me actually Blends into the everyday writers for me so the uni ball is what I would consider an Everyday Writer but there's some other things as well and I mentioned them earlier for me also everyday writers are things like this like the Lamy Safari I've been using this for a really long time I use them for my morning pages I like writing with a fountain pen in the morning when I'm trying to capture my thoughts there's something a little bit more I don't know premium and romantic about it for some reason I just prefer jotting down the things I'm thinking about with this than I do with my budget friendly bargain if you're new to riding with a fountain pen if you haven't really tried before or you've tried it and have kind of failed I'd recommend you try it again with these safaris because they're not expensive they're less than $30 about $25 on Amazon depending on the color that you want um you can get them in a variety of different nibs you can get the the thin medium or thick I've got the medium nib on this one and I'd recommend that as a good starter because it's not a very scratchy fountain pen if you do go for the finer Point even though typically I like to write with a finer Point as you know with all my other pens this one I would say go with a medium because it flows better and it's just a nicer experience and again because I'm using this pen in that flow state in the morning where I'm kind of writing very quickly and getting my thoughts down onto the page I like having the thicker pen and the and the smoother uh flow for that but if you don't want to get a Lamy Safari if you've tried one of those before there's lots of other options Parker have fountain pens which are very kind of basic um straightforward A step above the budget friendly these are probably again less than $20 but there's a lot of options out there you don't have to be stuck on one brand so when I'm talking about everyday Riders you can bring those budget Friendlies with you or you can go for something a little bit more premium like the Safari or the Parker fountain pens I just want to take a quick pause from the video to ask you to like And subscribe to this video if you're enjoying this content I've got a very small Channel and you liking this helps the algorithm find me okay back to the content which brings us on to the next part of the list which is the everyday carry part so again either of those you could have as everyday carry I know people who carry fountain pens as everyday carry I know I I certainly carry with this with me in my pocket a lot of the time is everyday carry and it's my budget friendly pick but there are certain pens that are designed to be with you all the time and for this I've got to kind of a range from lowend to real premium everyday carry pens so on my lowend I've got this really small oite oen they make this mini pen it's nice and small it writes pretty well I don't even hardly notice I have this one I have it in my pocket I don't carry it with me a lot I'll be totally honest but I have enjoyed carrying it with me the days that I do it takes its own special ink that you can buy directly from oite oite being a flashlight manufacturer but they do do a really nice job of creating this body it has this nice machined aluminium body on it and uh I think it's really nice it's a it's a nice budget friendly it's got that nice click and hold in place I think it's really cool but if you're looking for something a little bit more premium than that I could recommend these Bastion pens now these Bastion pens are sent to me directly by Bastion not sponsored just sent it to me for me to try out and honestly I've really liked them since they did send them to me so they sent me an aluminium a kind of An Unfinished aluminium version they all have these roller click in place I think they call them bolt action pens and they're kind of your classic EDC pen and they have a more premium one here that has carbon fiber and steel again a nice pen and you know really enjoyable the weight on that one is significantly Hefty so if you really want to know you have a pen with you in your pocket that's a good one to bring with you but these are just kind of a step up in terms of being more premium to have with you as part of EDC for me the most premium EDC you could have would probably be something like this mon plun uh I bought this used several years ago I bought it in 2010 before I could afford to buy my own one new from a store and this is got someone else's initials AG so if you're Ag and you sold this on eBay in in 2010 I've got your monthlong pen I carried with this with me in my pocket for a very long time and it's really dinged up and scratched so I really made it my own everything that I have I like to make my own and I I'm not precious about things about keeping things pristine I don't carry fountain pens with me in my pocket just cuz I don't find them practical when you're on the go taking something out of your pocket and you might be out at a grocery store or something like that but this is definitely something that I carried a long time the irony of it is though I don't love the ink that you get with these monthlong pens so when you do buy them on Blan cartridges they're not actually the best writing experience for me in my opinion and I think you actually get a better writing experience from something like at least for me from the uniball or from the G7 so it's kind of nice to know that you don't have to buy this really premium pen to carry with you everywhere when these budget friendly picks will do in your pocket all the time as well the upside though of these everyday carry ones are you're not going to with these with these roller balls you're not going to have a problem on a plane they're not going to leak everywhere and you know if you want to spend $60 $80 on one of these Bastion pens you really really does look premium the riding quality riding style I really like it the ink flows nicely in it and you can't really go wrong after that though I've got special occasions so what are the pens that I have with me for special occasions and what the hell is a special occasion so sometimes there's times where you want to have a pen and this is really sentimental and lots of people won't get this and you'll criticize me for it but there's definitely times or I've had times with my life where I wanted to have a pen where I was doing something significant and the signing of the thing was an important day for me so those things include things like when you get married and you sign your marriage certificate when you buy your house your first house and you sign that and there's been several times uh when I've been when I've signed off on things like the birth of my kids those things where I've decided to carry this pen with me or to use it for the signing of it and maybe take a picture of it even as I say it I know it's a bit over the top but you know what I like doing it uh it brings a little bit of joy to my life so why wouldn't I do it so for that I've got this mon block moisture stuck I featured it in a couple of videos before it's Le petti prance which is means it's got a kind of a very ornate nib on the front of it and I think I've gone for a fine nib on this also so I typically do prefer a fine nib except with the Safari this is made from platinum and it's got high premium resins and whatever they need to add to it to be able to charge $5 or $600 for a pen one of the things that's really nice about this is it it is is it is one of the best writing experiences you'll ever have if you've not written with anlan and you someone loves you enough to let you use theirs someone I don't let people use my pen because it's it's set to my writing pressure and if somebody presses too hard on it there is a chance they can do damage and I'd have to repair the nib so but if you do get a chance to write with one or if you can call into a monlong store and try one of their demo units do it I think you'll enjoy it it um the nice thing about this is it has the option of using um interchangeable ink cartridges that you can just put in the Plug and Play ones or what I'm doing here where I use the mon Blan ink and you you dip the nib in why don't I do it now you dip the nib in uh and I'm going to get ink all over this page so what you do here is you dip the nib in you press it all the way down to get the ink out and then you pull it back up you draw the ink back in and then let it DP so there's a whole process to it to to how you how you charge the ink in this pen um you know how you refill it it's not for the faint of hearted but you know what it's nice it's it's just kind of part of the process so uh so in my top pick for that i' probably given it away but my top pick for the top premium products is a mlan moister Stu or any of the mlan fountain pen range of pens if this is too much you know and I totally get it that you might not want to spend 5 or $600 on a pen the one that I used for years as a kind of I've wanted one of these pens for for you know 15 years uh the thing I used on the way is one of these shafers sh a f f e r um is also another well-known brand of of Fountain Pen I think I paid $60 for this back in the day another it doesn't quite have the premium you know it's not made from platinum or silver or things like that but the writing experience with this is is is very similar and it's just feels very premium as well so you don't have to spend that crazy amount of money on on the fountain pen to get what you need you can get them for $50 $60 and and you won't be sorry so now for the rest of the video I'm going to have Inc on me awesome premium pens so the next section I want to talk about a speciality tools and that's when you're doing things more than just writing notes when more than you're just you know getting your thoughts out on paper or pulling a pen out to write in your little notebook and here I'm talking about technical pencils clutch pencils sketch pencils and things like that and the Staple in this category is the Stadler Mars micro 0.5 mm I love these um again I've had this for the longest time I used to do te technical Graphics back in school you know when I was like 15 I us to on a big drawing board and that's when I first started using these micros and I've they've always been my clutch pencil of choice ever since then so this is the kind of basic cheapest version of that that you can get you can get really fancy looking clutch pencils like this pencil this is the Pentel 0.5 which is made in Japan it looks more like a classic pen you can definitely EDC this because this other one you can't carry in your pocket cuz it ends in a point and you'll very quickly end up with that in your leg but this is how you would EDC a pencil I think that you know by the time you put the lid on there and you you know clicked it out it still looks like a premium pen but it's fantastic for sketching those things out when you do want to sketch things another one that's good in this category again going back to Bastion Bastion make a really chunky really heavy steel pencil that instead of having a bolt action like the pens do that's how you click the pencil lead out and this is a 7 mm version so an even thicker nib wow that is a chunky pencil and it feels really just feels really good in the hand it just makes you feel like you want to sketch something if you want I love that okay anyway if you're looking for a present for anyone for you know upcoming holidays or for Christmas presents or whatever you celebrate I think this is a great one this clutch pencil it's very chunky it feels incredibly premium I will have links in the description below and I'm going to reach out to these I will probably have a discount so check I'll have a discount code likely 10% off or something like that with these companies that I've shown in here I'll do my best to get the discounts for you the last one here in this section for sketching is this Faber castle and this is really thick this is where you've got a chunky lead and this is for just you know you can write with it but this is doing very broad sketching you can put in different you know from HP through b leads into a b234 for the softer leads and really do some sketching shading and things like that so I use this exclusively for when I'm sketching things out like when I was designing this office space and I wanted to sketch out how things might look and then cut things out this is the thing that I go to for that so a premium experience from something that's not very expensive for that specific use case which brings me on the last section which is the pen that I have on my desk and the thing that I grab when I'm in a rush and for me that's this refine pen now the thing this is called the ep1 refin pen it's polished titanium it's got a copper insert in it so when you got the The Click down when you got the bolt action you can see that copper move in and out and I love it couple of reasons I love this one it's really short I like the small style in the hand it's a very comfortable pen but it's very very weighty as well the writing style on it is absolutely fantastic it just flows uh it's a really good pen and it's a really good beater pin now I like this because it could fit a couple of different categories this could be your everyday pen it could be your EDC pen that you carry in your pocket it could be your desk pen as well but it's also a really premium product and it's the first pen for me that kind of checks a lot of these boxes I also got this PS1 spinner stand so I should say refin sent me this they sent me this pen and they sent me this desk spinner this is the PS1 desk spinner they I'm not they're not paying for a positive review I don't know them anything but they just sent it to me to try I get asked a lot by different companies now would I try their products and I just said yes a few of these things that looked interesting to me but I've had this on my desk for a month and I love it the spinner is great because I am a fider when I'm on a call and this is basically like having a fidget spinner on your desk so what you have here is a copper wheel attached to the base that spins independently on some nice bearings and the pen just clicks in the top of it so when you need it I leave it right here next to my mouse which is why it's the perfect desk pen when I need it pop it out also something I can fidget with on calls write down what I need with a classic fantastic writer and then pop it back in again and don't worry about it the the kind of brush Titanium with the copper feel copper mix is really classy and again a great gift for anyone who's into EDC or into writing with really classy pens I can definitely stand over they would enjoy getting something like that all right so stepping back from it all though what are the things you got wrong I created these arbitrary six categories that I think these different writing instruments fall into and what my favorite are within each if you ask me to have one pen and I could only have one pen to ever write with for the rest of my life what would that be and for me would probably be I know you're going to think the mon Blanc cuz I spent all that money on it but would probably be the uni ball micro this is just a classic I use it all the time and I'd be lost without it there are definitely pens I enjoy using more but just because of how versatile it this is if I'm in search of perfection I haven't found it but if there's a pen that I'm going to probably use for rest of my life it is these uni balls as long as they continue to make them so what are the pens that you like to use what are the different writing instruments where do you think I'm crazy and I've overspend or what are some of the beaters that I haven't considered or the EDC pocket carry pens that I should have in my collection to make sure I'm getting the best benefit from it all right hope you enjoyed this video good luck

Channel: Marcus O'Brien

Views: 323,193

Keywords: montblanc meisterstuck, montblanc ballpoint pen, fountain pens, everyday carry, edc pen, big idea design pen, fountain pen, fountain pen review, pocket pens, everyday carry tech

Id: AQkjH_06KUE

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023