Open Mike: The uni Jetstream Low-Viscosity Ballpoint

A little diversion and brief detour this morning so I can mention my current favorite pen. It's called a Jetstream.

The world standard for pens is of course the venerable Bic Cristal in iconic blue. Bic or BIC is a simplification of Bich, pronounced identically, the surname of company co-founder and visionary Marcel Bich. The Cristal, shaped like a standard pencil, will be 75 years old next December. It is the best selling pen ever with 100 billion sold as of 2006. The company is still based in the northern suburb of Paris where it's always been. It's the ultimate disposable pen: you can get the price down to 12¢ each if you buy 500 of them. That low cost of course assumes you can somehow use them all, which I guess maybe an office or a school could do. It's probably more sensible to buy, say, two dozen at a time. That way they're still reasonably cheap at 29¢ each but you might feasibly get around to getting some use out of all of them. Note that the price rises considerably the fewer you buy, which is unsatisfying, since absurd cheapness is prominent among the Bic Cristal's many charms. 

A Bic Cristal has two holes in it. There's a tiny hole in the clear plastic body of the pen to equalize the pressure inside and outside the pen, and since 1991 there has been a hole at the top of the cap to take solemn note of at least one tragedy and maybe more: a nameless kid somewhere inhaled a Bic pen cap and suffocated. The hole in the cap thus adds a disagreeable memento mori to the familiar and iconic design—but if the air hole saves even one child's life, then okay. Otherwise the design is unchanged since the beginning, making it unquestionably one of the great examples of industrial design in world history. Appropriately, an example is enshrined in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, just as if there were anyone in the world who has not already seen one.

Despite such formidable competition, I'm a fan of the uniball [sic] Jetstream made by the Mitsubishi Pencil Co. Ltd. of Shinagawa, Tokyo, which is no relation to the multinational conglomerate The Mitsubishi Group.

The uni Jetstream is a "hybrid" or "hybrid gel" pen type, meaning its low-viscosity oil-based ink flows freely like a water-based-ink gel pen, but dries instantly, won't smudge, and is permanent like a traditional high-viscosity oil-based ballpoint. A more recent term than "hybrid gel" is "low-viscosity ballpoint" although they refer to the same thing. Pilot calls its version "Acros." The trick to writing with any uni Jetstream is to cultivate a light touch: you don't have to bear down, as we've learned to do with thousands of ballpoint pens since childhood. It's not actually easy for some people to retrain longtime and unconscious muscle memory. To me it's a relief. I dislike those super-cheap no-name ballpoints that make you press too hard.

uni* makes Jetstream pens in many styles and flavors. Since I needed to restock my desktop pen mug recently—I usually just order yet another box of Pilot EasyTouch or PaperMate Profile pens to distribute around the house, and God only knows where they all go—this time I made a little impromptu survey by ordering a bunch of different types of Jetstreams. 

They all handle differently. Some of them I actually don't like very much. This turned out to be my favorite: 

Rather awkwardly for my purposes here, it does not appear to have a name, just a generic description that doesn't work as a search term (Amazon's search function is completely broken now anyway, although that's a topic for another day). [UPDATE: It's called an SX-217, but a search for that term on Amazon doesn't get you anywhere.] Here are the links for the black one and also a blue one. I much prefer the 0.7 mm point, although it also comes in the inferior 1 mm point size which writes worse, if that's something you want. (Just kidding. Suit yourself.)

Why do I like it? Because it's the most comfortable pen I tried and writes extremely smoothly, assuming that light touch I already mentioned.

A few caveats, though:

• I'm no expert on pens nor even a proper enthusiast.
• And I doubt I ever will be, because I don't write by hand very much.
• I'm a leftie, meaning I can't use fountain pens, because we drag our writing hand through what we just wrote. (We also push the pen ahead of our writing hand, which as a general rule doesn't help our handwriting.)
• Except when I forget, I carry a pen with me in my shirt pocket, and I have an irrational preference for pens that are carried with the point facing up, toward heaven, rather than down, toward hell, the result of a long-ago experience with a leaky pen ruining a favorite shirt. Good pens don't really leak any more, I suppose, but another thing I carry around is my old prejudice and thus, my old preference. So I prefer pens with removable caps because they point the right way in stowage. It's not like I won't carry a downward-pointing pen, but it nags at me just that little bit.
• This pen is expensive, per my personal definition of the cost of these things. I'm sure someone will chime in about his $10,000 MattBlanc, because YOLO and blah blah, but to me a pen has to be reasonably close to being disposable, since I tend to lose them even when I try not to. I have absent-minded professor syndrome. You, in contrast, might be a grownup.

The Pink Gold Stylus Single Knock is another one I rather unexpectedly liked. Very light and fragile-seeming, but comfortable and somehow pleasing, and the touchscreen stylus works well. And it has a name, and a great one at that. And readers have suggested I look into the uni Power Tank. It's uni's version of the Fisher Space Pen. Its ink is under pressure so it can always write, whether upside down or in very cold temperatures**.

You can also get a nice sampler of various Jetstream options from Jetpens.

So that's it then. My current favorite pen. Could change.

Mike

*How loath I am to begin a sentence with a lowercase letter.

**And those two sentences are a nice illustration of whether to use an apostrophe when adding an "s" to "it." It was one of the last basic grammar rules I learned. I was an adult before I sorted it out.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Albert Smith]

As a kid in the '60s, that classic Bic pen was ubiquitous in every grade in my school. It was also responsible for the first magic trick most of us learned. The blue bullet shaped cap when held between the thumb and finger while the pen was held inches away with the other hand, would fly horizontally across the gap when you squeezed the cap, causing it to slide free of your digits with enough velocity to snap "magically" back on the pen. It was so easy to be entertained back then.

[John Krumm]

I also buy those pens, and they are a favorite. They are my dog's favorite too, so I have to keep them out of reach, not left on the coffee table next to a book, where some have met their doom.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I was a pen-carrying nerd for decades, but I've moved past shirts that have pockets, and I moved into electronic media early in the Palm Pilot era (then smart phones) and stopped carrying paper notebooks in my pocket. (Still use them in larger sizes, but those aren't "Every Day Carry" for me.)

But yeah, those Uniball pens are good, those and the Pilot G2. I like the broad-nib gel ink instances generally, and liked broad fountain pen nibs too (still have my Scheaffer Targa; but then I still have my very first fountain pen, a Parker 45 I found on the ground on the Stanford campus in 1963). The smoothness and light touch of gel pens is what moved me away from fountain pens. And they have much better black ink, fountain pens do poorly at black.

[Nico]

Can’t imagine how many M10’s I’ve used in 31 years with the mail.
Sometimes you’d just lose them en route, sometimes people forgot to hand it back after signing for a registered letter.
Nico (the pensionado).

[Peter Wright]

I bought a set of these (although mine are 1.0mm tip) after reading a review in the Wiretapper section of the New York Times. These are definitely the best pens I have used (far beyond the ubiquitous BIC), and I find they last a long time as well. In all practical terms, they are also far beyond any fountain pen from MontBlanc, Parker, etc. Owning those types of prestige pens is about showing excess wealth or pretending to some degree of eccentricity (IMHO as they say), and as I get older, I try to leave such things behind. The JetStream is to pens what good quality quartz is to watches.

[Dave]

If you want a wide selection of Uni Jetstreams, check jetpens.com. (Even though you don't get $ for that company's link.)

I narrowed down the selection as best I could and still had 58 choices (out of 2,273 originally). Choosing a price between $1 and $10 drops you down to only 1,692 choices :>)

I've had good luck with the Uniball Signo (Uniball 207). But I do like the Pilot Precise V5 RT. They're both about the same price per pen.

The reason I disliked the Bic pens (in high school) was that I tended to grip them too hard. My hand would need shaking to "wake it up" every 15 minutes.

Back in the day (about 100 years ago!), lefties were smacked with a ruler if they wrote with their left hand. It wasn't cruelty; it was to prevent smudging the fountain pen ink. :>)

[robert e]

I'm intrigued! That model is the SX-217 stick pen, if my google-fu is anything (SX body + 0.7mm point). I may try the refills in my Pilot G2 pens, as they supposedly fit (though not the other way around). The G2s are nice, especially the Dr. Grip, but a lighter ink would be welcome. (Pen GAS is relatively affordable, thank goodness!)

[Gadfly]

Good to know. Tough being left-handed. I am also among that 10%. Writing without smearing feels like a small miracle sometimes...

[Dave_lumb]

My current favourite pen is the uni Power Tank.

[Roger Bartlett]

How loath I am to begin a sentence with a lowercase letter.

Interesting editing choice... you chose to use the lower case but the Amazon website you link to has about a dozen examples of using the uppercase for the brand name. And then you did not end this rhetorical question with a question mark. Please explain your thinking behind your decision. :-)

[It's open to interpretation of course. But...I usually go to the company's website for the styling of the company name. They're not 100% consistent but most often use lower case. The structure of the sentence doesn't ask for a question mark...it's similar to "how happy I am to see you" or "how good it is to be alive." If anything it would get an exclamation point. "How loath am I" is a question. "How loath I am" is merely a statement.

I'm usually just playing, though, so I'm not insisting I'm right. --Mike]

[Nige]

I have a "uni-ball eye micro" (in black) on my desk. Someone in the company orders them so I use them!

[bob]

I also very much favor the Jetstream.

IIRC, In grade school I used to write answers to test questions (or formulae, etc.) really small and insert the slip of paper into the Bic housing. Voila - thanks to one of our favorite natural phenomena (optics!) I could read 6 different magnified lines with slight twirls of the pen.

[William Lewis]

Number 2 lead, .5 mm mechanical pencil.

A pen is only used for legal requirements, when forced to use it. Otherwise, it is as "clumsy and random" as a blaster. I'll stick with the more elegant weapon.

;)

[Tom Noto]

Mike,

If you like the jetstream, you might want to take a look at the Pentel EnerGel, also in .7. As a fellow left-hander, I can report that the Energel ink flows smoothly and is very smudge resistant.I used Pilot G2s for many years and for whatever reason, the refills don't stand up well to left-handed writing. -Tom

[Tony]

I used to quite like this style of “gel pen” precisely because of the light touch - I was finding myself getting hand cramp writing with cheap ballpoints that require way too much pressure to work reliably.

However, I’m becoming ever-more conscious of the amount of waste - particularly plastic waste - that I’m creating, and ended up swapping to a pair of Lamy fountain pens with refillable cartridges back in 2020. I bought three different glass pots of ink (one black, one green, one blue), and I’ve still yet to finish even one of them. Same flowy and effortless writing, but a lot less waste.

For what it’s worth, they do make left-handed nibs (

[Dogman]

Fisher Space Pen. I bought two of them years ago. One I keep in my camera bag, the other in my pants pocket with my keys, knife, coins, etc. I love them. To keep things simple, I could probably do like the Soviets did and just use a pencil. But when I carried one in my pants pocket, the points broke too often.

But how often do I actually write anything? Filling out forms while in a doctor's office or signing something somewhere is about it. Everything else is just typing into the computer. Whatever. I still like the Space Pen and will continue to carry one until they slide me into the crematorium.

[Dave]

"**And those two sentences are a nice illustration of whether to use an apostrophe when adding an "s" to "it." It was one of the last basic grammar rules I learned. I was an adult before I sorted it out."

It's easy; contraction, yes; possessive, no. :>)

"How loath I am . . . " Yes Mike, you're right with the grammar. (Of course, you already knew that.)

Since we're already OT, I must pass along an amusing reply by William F. Buckley, Jr. (from https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/a-born-teacher/):

"To the correspondent who wrote “Don’t start a sentence with ‘and’…. I am beginning to wonder just how good (or bad) your high school was…,” Buckley replied, “Verses 2-26 and 28-31, Chapter I, Genesis, all begin with ‘And.’ The King James scholars went to pretty good high schools.”"

[Alan Fairley]

I too am a big fan of the uniball gel pens, though I prefer the click-button style. You can bring the per unit cost down significantly by buying refill ink units for them, just make sure you get the right style.

[Dori]

I've bought a few things from this site which carries those pens (and lots of other ones :)
https://www.jetpens.com/

They also have YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens

You can all curse me later when you've spent a bunch of money :)

[jp41]

My preference for retractable ballpoint pens that are extended single-handedly (without a cap to remove) could be considered irrational. My go-to best pen value is the Pentel Client, which now appears to be discontinued. I am going to be protective of my current supply. https://www.amazon.com/Pentel-Client-Retractable-Ballpoint-BK910A/dp/B005OYUVHE

[Andrew Lamb]

I'm a leftie and I use a fountain pen. It has a left-handed nib. There are such things. I love using it. Less wasteful than throwing empty biros away and I feel a small sense of triumph that I can actually a proper pen.

When I first went to grammar school, aged 11, I got major brief from my form teacher for making a mess with my pen. What a miserable start to life there. The joy I felt when I first used a nib for left-handers was considerable.

[Hugh]

How loath am I?

;)

[mja]

Mike, you should definitely not take a look at all of the pen options over on https://www.jetpens.com/. And definitely not fall into the rabbit hole that is their YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens

[Peter]

My favorite writing instrument is the Pentel EnerGel Deluxe RTX Retractable Liquid Gel Pen, 0.7 mm. The cost is $3 for two on Amazon. I'm a lefty too – the ink dries fast enough to (mostly) avoid smudging. I've quit using other pens.

[Mike Ferron]

Another lefty<< and I have the penmanship to prove it. Pens? Give me a Zebra medium point black. Full metal version please.

[PDLanum]

Did you learn to tilt the paper that you write on as those of us who are right-handed? (Tilt the paper diagonally from top to bottom like this \ \)

If you change the way the paper is tilted to / /, you will not "drag your hand through the wet ink.

I bet your teachers beat that into your head.

[Ren Flugel]

The refills are SXR-7.

[Kye Wood]

The times they are a changing. So. Civil, measured grammatical disobedience is to be encouraged.

Picking nits on grammar is truly a joyless way to spend ones time on Earth. Especially when we have Market Speak rewrite of lazy grammar that's clinically proven by 80% of experts to halve your IQ. Or your money back.

[Kye Wood]

Ps I've ordered a dozen of these pens of all varieties, on your recommendation.

Because? I'm a lefty. Hey, is there a fountain pen that's lefty certified? I have to admit that seeing a fountain pen in use is one of the rare sights that elicits envy in me.

[Amine Sultan]

You made a small typo : it's Montblanc, not Mattblanc.

[I was just joking. Plus, I don't want to offend anyone who actually has a Montblanc ballpoint. To each their own, and no hate. --Mike]