pen 24: paper mate profile

today's pen creates an awkward moment here on a pen a day. the paper mate profile is clearly paper mate's answer to yesterday's bic velocity. on the packaging is a bold yet less audacious claim that it is the the world's smoothest pen. now as well all know, the world exists in the universe and since bic has claimed dominion over that, the question must be asked: who is full of it.

now for one i respect paper mate's claim in it's scope, even if not true it does allow for other yet unknown civilizations among the stars to have come up with a smoother gliding pen.

i appreciate their restraint. but now i just have to know which of these is worthy of the world title, but i'll get to that a little later.

so i sat down and decided if i need to compare this to the previous post id have to do something similar, a darker style heavy on the ink. this pen is nice in that you can lightly sketch with it before having to commit to a line, i like that. it allows one to build up values by going over it a few times, it's much more flexible when it comes to laying ink on paper, it is definitely not an all or nothing pen.

the profile is also a clicky pen, which means that it doesn't require a cap that will eventually be lost, it had a nice comfort grip and in addition writes well.

so now we get into the "smoothe" issue.

without really knowing how to quantify smoothness (it kinda seems like it might be more than a little subjective) i decided to rubber band the two pens together and draw. below is just one of those tests.






in addition i did curly-q's, loops, stairs and scribbles, in all fairness i did notice a slight difference in the velocity, it seemed to glide better than the profile... BUT... while it may have the right to claim the title it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a better pen, ever hear of too much of a good thing?

the profile has more traction, more bite, it doesn't slip around so much which makes detail work a lot more precise, as i mentioned it doesn't gush ink with every stroke, and while it does have a tendency to build up ink on the tip like the velocity, it doesn't seem to deposit the excess like its competitor. as someone who hates getting things like ink all over my hands i see this as a huge plus!

so okay, it may not live up to the claim on its box, but it is a pretty good pen, and at between two and four dollars for a pair it really is worth the cost.