pen 106: schneider xtra document

today's pen is the schneider xtra document, another little gem from office depot. the only place as far as i can tell that you can buy this pen in an actual retail store is at office depot (the internet is telling me that these pens are also carried at office max but i don't remember ever seeing them there). if you don't live near one that is just unfortunate, however, you can always get these pens off of internet resources like officemax.com, officedepot.com, ebay and amazon.

i cant remember how much i paid for this pen, i bought this at office depot along with several other pens made by schneider, but i'm pretty sure it was somewhere between $2-$3 for a single pen, which makes this one a little bit on the higher side of inexpensive.

to start, the xtra document is a plastic ballpoint pen, the body is average construction, nothing really worth getting into here, i will say that the pen looks rather sexy, it's slim, has a carbon pattern and has orange and silver highlights. the tip of my particulate pen is a bold 0.6 mm, their website states that there is a 0.3 mm version available but i did not see any of these at the store. 

the xtra document is a clean pen, it dries quickly, the ink is dark, and it flows heavy. you can put down a lot of ink in a short amount of time, there is some bleed both out and through the paper, but that seems to happen more if you are drawing slowly, if you keep moving the pen around it's not that big of a problem, just be aware is all.  the pen's flow is fair, as mentioned, it can lay down some ink, but does have a tendency to get inconsistent, especially of you're inking over pencil lines. this pen has fair bite, it does interact with the page and i personally like that. there is such a thing as too smooth. like i mentioned above, this pen is good for several things, it can be used to ink pencil lines, it can fill small to medium areas with black, is good for gestural or contour drawings, i wouldn't use this pen for writing though, but then again, i tend to write small. the pen has poor range of value, it's an "all or nothing" pen, again, that isn't really bad news, just be aware of the pen's limitations. i guess i will end with this pen being available in eight colors, and that i would recommend getting one of these pens to experiment with, while not my "perfect pen" it is useful and while i might not buy many more of these pens, i have bought two. again, if you have the opportunity to try one of these out, you might just fall in like with the schneider xtra document.

website:

www.schneiderpen.de

what they say:

roller with liquid ink technology for waterproof writing.

"Ink roller with conical tip made of stainless steel and innovative liquid ink technology. Waterproof ink according to ISO 14145-2. The Xtra ink regulator controls the ink flow exactly and consistently from beginning to end, without blots or interruptions. The large ink reservoir has a level indicator and an ergonomic rubber grip on the barrel of the pen, promoting a tireless and relaxed writing experience. The cap has a high value