[Pen/Pencil Review] The Uni-Ball Vision Needle 0.5mm Blue
Last week I had a bit of a mystery on my hands. I received a notice of a Registered Mail Parcel in my mailbox. Now, in my ways of thinking this was a paradox. For, in my experience Registered Mail is a BAD THING, while Parcels are GOOD THINGS. What could it be?
My mystery parcel turned out to be the Uni-ball Vision Needle, 0.5mm in blue ink from Tiger Pens in the UK. My first “British” pen. And also one I may have seen here in the States that I’ve been thinking about trying out and never have.
I like Uni-ball products. They’re good, solid writing instruments. Uni-ball makes a huge effort to create inks that don’t fail under certain criteria – like leaking during flights, or preventing check fraud by bonding paper fibers to the ink pigments. So, I have reasonably good expectations of the pen. And it lives up to those expectations.
First of all, it’s not a fancy pen. It’s an every day, throw it in your purse/briefcase pen – which also lowers some expectations. However, fancy does not always equate to “Good”. The Uni-ball Vision Needle is a good pen. A solid, workhorse pen. The fact that it’s NOT a “fancy” pen kind of works in it’s favor.
The Uni-ball Vision Needle is completely plastic except for the needle tip and the clip. I always worry about that since I write with a pretty firm hand. I’ve bent and broken plastic seated needle points before, but this one feels pretty solid to me. Part of that solid feel to me is, I think, that the point and the ink feel so smooth when laying down a line, that I don’t feel as though I’m pushing that hard to make it work. Also, the Vision Needle uses a liquid ink system so the ink DOES flow easily and doesn’t skip or scratch like gel ink can. However, if you use it on glossy paper, like a program book or something, it will smear until it dries, and it does take more than 10 seconds to dry without smearing.
The Vision Needle is 5.5″ long capped, and nearly 6″ long with the cap posted, which makes it comfortable in my hand. Being plastic, it’s really lightweight, but still well-balanced. It’s comfortable to work with. It’s just an all-around solid pen.
Let’s see the numbers…
1. How does it work? – 1 – it works well. For what I’ve seen and used it for, there’s no leaking, skipping, or scratching. The ink flows smoothly on the page. It is liquid ink so if you touch it immediately on glossy paper, it will smear. Porous paper not a problem.
2. Grip and feel – 0.5 – the length is comfortable. The pen is light, for those who like some heft to their pens, this doesn’t have it. It has an okay diameter, but nothing special in the grip. It’s comfortable but no one’s gone out of the way for any kind of “comfort grip”.
3. Material – .5 it’s plastic. It’s lightweight plastic. It’s meant to be used, lost and/or thrown away. The innovations have gone into the ink – not the packaging.
4. Overall Design – 1 I do like the overall design for this pen – since it’s not MEANT to be “fancy”, this is where the utilitarian design works for the pen. It’s a generic workhorse, liquid ink pen that does what it promises to do – work.
5. Price Point – 1 – for a liquid ink pen, it’s good. I had to do some searching because the pen I was sent runs £2.22. But I did find multi-pack at OfficeDepot for $8.99/5 (~1.80 each), which makes them quite affordable for what they are.
That’s 4 bronze pencils out of 5.
