As promised on Friday, I am reviewing the new-to-me Pilot Juice 0.5 gel pens. The pens look like a lot of the Japanese gel pens on the market but I thought I’d give them a try. What I didn’t realize until I started writing this, is that the inks in the Juice are water-resistant and fade-resistant. Well, that’s a notable difference!
The bodies of the pens are clear plastic with a silicone grip area that coordinates with the ink color and matches the retractable clicker. The clip on the pens are spring loaded so that they can easily be clipped to a thick notebook cover or binder.
I purchased a blue-black 0.5 and a leaf green 0.5 (I couldn’t help myself!).
The tips look like a standard rollerball mechanism. This close-up reveals the very subtle dot pattern on the silicone grips.
In writing tests, the pens wrote well. Smooth, with no clumping or skipping.The blue-black is more of a navy blue to me but a good color anyway. Just a brighter more vivid blue than the other blue-black gel ink I’ve used. I included a sample of the Uni-Ball Style Fit Blue-Black for comparison which is more of a grayed-out blue.
The leaf green ink was much lighter than I thought it would be and it photographed even lighter. It is somewhat legible on the paper but not at all legible in the photo. It was the darker of the two yellow-green colors available in the Juice line but its still not the perfect green.
After I photographed everything I did test the pens for water-resistance and they do resist water which makes them suitable for signing documents and addressing envelopes.
Each color is available for $1.65 each and are currently only available in the 0.5 size. The pens can be unscrewed and a new refill put in but currently only red, blue and black refils are available.
(This pen was tested on the Miquelrius medium flexible 300 grid paper book purchased from B+N.)
so how does this differ (or does it not from Hi-Tec-C) other than its a cuter package?
Based on my very un-scientific tests, the Juice is considerably more water-resistant than the Hi-Tec-C line. The Juice line is also available in some opaque colors that can be used on dark papers. Does that help?
I love the Pilot Juice pens and all of the colors are also available in 0.38mm tip at jstationery.com. That green is pretty light, The Uni-ball Signo 207 comes in a pretty green, but I think it’s a 0.7mm tip.
I love these pens. I think the packaging is so cute, but I am a sucker that way! I have this green too and it’s so light that I can’t use it for much writing but I don’t mind, I have been using it for decorating letters to pen pals, for which it is perfect!
Besidss being water resistant, how is juice any different from hittecc in terms of writing?
The Juice tips are cone-shaped rather than needlepoint which some people prefer. I find Juice pens to write more consistently, especially after sitting for awhile. Hi-Tec Cs tend to need a little priming before they write if they’ve been sitting unused for any amount of time, especially the smaller tip sizes. I don’t find that with the Juice pens. Also Juice refills are the standard European G2 size where the Hi-Tec C refills are Hi-Tec C style so there are more upscale pens that will accept a Juice refill than the Hi-Tec C.