Editing The Pen Addict 104/transcript (section)

== Pentel Sleechy ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just a really badly designed pen from a performance perspective. The ink cartridges come out at an angle, which is a challenge with a multi-pen, right? Because you have two or three or four ink cartridges sharing the same barrel, so when you deploy an ink cartridge, you have to consider from an engineering standpoint that that ink cartridge, the tip of the pen has to come out straight to provide you a good writing experience.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Pentel failed on the engineering of this pen because the refills push up against each other when you eject them, which makes the tip of the pen come out at an angle. And you just can't write like that. It's an obvious issue and it's a design flaw and it just makes for a really poor pen. And on top of that,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' like if you use the Hitec C single cartridge pen and you use the Hitec C Colito, the pens are going to write the same. Like they feel the same. the quality of the nib of those pens is identical.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The different, there's a huge difference between the single cartridge Pentel Sleechy and the multi-pen Pentel Sleechy's refill. The Sleechy's refills do not write as sharp or as well as the single cartridge models. And it's just a really poor design. And kind of a letdown because they had an opportunity there to be a big player in that multi-pen genre which is huge in Japan. And it's just been pretty much a failure to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Toll line from OfficeMax which I like the Toll gel or tool. Is it tool? I think it's tool. No idea. Yeah, we'll go with tool. Yeah. It rhymes with ooh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's Gaelic for pen. We're going to go with that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that sounds right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Alright. Anyway, the tool ballpoint is a waste of money. A lot of people love this whole line of pens. The gel pens are excellent. They're very comparable to something like the Uniball Sino 207 which is high praise. But just stay away from the ballpoint. They've gone through two models of all these pens. The ballpoint has not improved at all. It's just a ballpoint pens that write messy are a waste. And that's what the tool ballpoint does. It's just a waste.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I would skip over that and stick with the gel ink pens from the tool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Bic has over the past few years they've kind of made a little bit of inroads into making a better quality pen. They've done some roller balls that have been nice and some needle points that have been nice. They came out with something called the A1 gel which is something I picked off the store shelf. May have been in a grocery store even. It is horrible. It is just messy, scratchy, terribly designed. The barrel looks like there was no quality control on the barrel. You know, all the seams are visible and rough from where the plastic barrels getting sealed together. It's just kind of a train wreck of a pen which, you know, I don't expect a lot out of Bic as a brand as a whole but just to totally waste money on a pen like that it's never a good experience. The last one I listed was the Karan Dash 849 and I got a lot of blowback on this one because it's really all about the refill on this one. It's a great barrel and I said I'd try to find a new refill and I haven't. A lot of people have the same experience that I did with this refill. It's such a good pen. It's not a cheap pen. It's like 15. I think I got mine off Amazon. I think it was about $15. So it's not expensive. It's a really great barrel for a retractable pen. It comes with one just a horrible, horrible ballpoint pen refill. So that's one if you're going if you want that pen expect it to write poorly and have a new refill ready to go for it when you buy it because it's no redeeming values no redeeming qualities of that refill at all. So the comment section of this post was really good. Probably better than the top five pens comment section. So check those out. A lot of Odo Rook hate. Mary Collis mentioned the Lambie balloon rollerball which is one I forgot. that is a really good pen barrel with a really bad refill. It's very much like the Caran Dash and with the Lambie balloon the refill was proprietary. There's no option to replace it which is kind of sad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I guess that's about it. A lot of people hate the dude. A lot of people hate the Rook. The Twisby Back 700 got a mention which I can see that. It's a very oddly designed pen and I have a review pending in the queue for that one along with the Noodler's Ahab which is a flex nib pen from Noodler's. They have some issues with quality control on those I think. I'm not a fan of those. And one of the ones that I missed that I really should have put on there is the Uniball Vision RT. It's a horrible horrible liquid ink pen. It's like writing with a marker. It just leaks through page after page. It'll bleed through two pages at a time if you just write at a normal pace. It's been a really really bad pen. An awful pen. You can look up my review on that and it's just terrible. So that's pretty much it. There's a bunch more comments in there so people complaining about the pens that they hate. So it's good to check out. So I think that's about it. It's always fun to do these exercises to see what has changed, what hasn't changed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In six months' time there was surprisingly little change I think which is kind of good. The pens that we think are good or that I think are good are kind of holding up to that and I think that's a good thing. It solidifies the recommendation of some of those pens. So I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and as always if you have feedback on those lists let me know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And let me tell you how you can let Brad know. You can get him on Twitter. He is at dowdyism D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M or you can go to our show notes page which is today 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 1-0-4 and not only will you find all the links there to what we discussed today you'll also find the contact button which will allow you to send an email to us. I am iMike I am YKE on Twitter. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. Until next time we'll be back next Thursday as we spoke about before. Have a great week. Enjoy your pens. Bye bye. Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]