2 days ago
This $50 Brass Pen Brands Itself As Perfect. Somehow, It Delivers.
Phil Ryan/NYT Wirecutter
Pen connoisseurs will be quick to point out that the Perfection pen is clearly a rip-off of — or, if we're being charitable, an ode to — the Fisher Bullet Space Pen. Copycat products often irk me, but not this time.
The Space Pen uses special pressurized refills that are usually more than twice as expensive as the Penco refill for the Perfection pen. Plus, the Perfection pen can be filled with any standard D1 refill, including the much-lauded and quick-drying Jetstream ink used in our top plastic pen pick. If you buy multiple refills at a time, you can refill the Perfection pen for less than it would cost to buy a pack of disposable plastic pens.
This makes the Perfection pen a somewhat more eco-conscious choice, even if D1 refills are metal and cannot be recycled. But by reusing the pen housing, you're still keeping some plastic out of the landfill, which is another reason I plan to keep using the one I have until I die.
The best part of the Perfection pen's ability to use standard refills is that you can choose a wide variety of colors, tip sizes, and ink types. If you wanted to, you could use a different color for every day of the week. More reasonably, teachers can switch colors to something other than blue or black for grading papers and not need more than one pen body. (I'm boring and default to black ink.)
Notably, I've found that the ink refills from Penco work without any problems on every kind of paper I've tried them on. I especially appreciate that they work on thermal receipt paper, which often caused problems for the official refill in my fancy Lepine pen, due to the paper's specially coated surface.
It's true that people have fewer reasons to write on paper these days. I'm not a Luddite; I take most of my notes in an app on my phone. But I still need a pen on the regular, and I know which one I'll be using — hopefully forever.
This article was edited by Erica Ogg and Ben Keough.
