I picked these up on a whim from the post back-to-school sale clearance section at my local Walgreens. The 4-pack of orange, pink, green, and blue are regularly priced at $7. I saw the price and did a double take and said out loud, “LOL, whut?”

I’ll start with the good. The ink in these flows really well, it’s a “ball” pen but writes like a rollerball. All in all it’s a comfortable feeling pen. The ink flows and it feels really smooth on all the paper I have used them on. Erasing was a breeze.

The cap posts and is replaced with a satisfying click. It stays put once capped too. I’ve been carting around the orange in my FodderstackXL and the cap stays put, despite my sitting and moving around all day. It hasn’t fallen off. The pen lacks a clip, so you need to have a pocket or case to carry these around.

So far so good. I like these little pens a lot. Now for the bad.

These look cheap. When I say cheap, I mean, like Bic sticks, or those old blue Papermate stick pens I loved in HS. I mean cheap AF. Despite the glossy hard plastic and slick clear cap with integrated eraser they exude cheapness.

The exterior tube is the refill. I had wondered if I could pop out the refill and slide it into another pen body that looked less cheap. Just take it from the inky mess I made, you cannot. The body is very sturdy, again, my fat butt has been sitting on one for weeks, and it has yet to break crack or even curve.

These are sturdy little pens that look cheap and are sold at a stupidly high price. I really enjoy writing with them, the colors of the ink are great- muted and not overly bright. They erase cleanly and feel good. However these are not $1.50 pens. The 4-pack would probably sell better at $4 or $5.

I picked these up with my own cash money from the clearance section. I got a steal of a deal- I paid 79 cents for the 4-pack, totally worth it. I should have purchased more.

The Uniball Signo DX is often replicated but never quite repeated. In the past you could only find the DX on import sites like JetPens (You can still get them and refills there) last year (2017) Uniball started to bring the DX to the US! You can’t get singles but you can an eight color multipack at most major office supply chains, like Staples.

I picked up my 8-pack at my local Staples for around $12. Not a great deal. The only package you can find in the US is the 8 color pack. My local Staples hides these on the bottom shelf in the Uni section of pegs.

I’m not gonna lie, the DX is a favorite pen of mine. First it is is a classic design often imitated (remember that Pen+Gear monstrosity I posted about?) Infact Staples has its own version of this venerable pen.

The tip provides smooth writing and sketching experience. The ink flows well but not overly wet. It’s close to perfect. The ink is also lightfast. I’ve tested many of the colors and not even a shift in direct August light. The ink is also waterproof/water resistant. Which means it is great for sketching and overlapping watercolor washes. Urban sketchers, here’s a great pen for you.

True to Uniball USA’s typical antics, the refills in these pens is labeled UMR-1 instead of UM-151. The colors are identical to my imported pens. Refills are available on JetPens from $1.35 up to $2.50.

These are great pens, and the basic 8-color set is great for sketching, adding a black to the mix would be quite helpful. But I find the lighter brighter colors to be great for under sketches. Anyway, I’ve missed the US launch of these by a year, but they are still a fabulous pen to add into your sketching and bullet journal tool kit.

Paperhate released the capped version of their lovely InkJoy gel ink pen during the 2018 Back-to-School season. The packages of the capped are similar to the retractable with the same assortment of colors.

The refills are interchangeable between pens. Which is, I guess, a useful piece of information. I noticed it so I share with you. The pens perform exactly the same, that is to say, the ink is flawless and flows well and dark and lovely. I love these refills.

The biggest difference that I notice between the two pens, other than the addition of the cap is that the tip or nose of the capped version is hard plastic while the retractable version is rubberized. The translucent colored cap clicks onto the hard plastic nose with an audible click, and stays put. The cap posts deeply and securely. In use what I really like about the depth of the post is that it doesn’t put the pen off balance or extend the length of the pen enormously. It posts as deep as it caps. It’s secure and stays put in my use.

Overall, if you like a capped pen over a retractable pen, this is a great gel ink option. Refills are available on Amazon and the pen is pretty comfortable. I find the capped version to be very comfortable, if anything more so than the retractable.

These are available just about everywhere. I’ve seen them in Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, and Target. If you can find them on sale or get them with a coupon, snatch them up. The InkJoy gel is a great pen.

The Yoobi Back to School sale display at my local Target included a 3×5 card case with 100 index cards, dividers, and labels. The hard poly case with elastic closure is great. At $2.99 they aren’t a steal but they aren’t a bad deal either.

The cards are paper thin and floppy. There is no header space above the ruling and the ruling itself is VERY dark. Despite being thin there is no show or bleed through with anything I wrote with, fountain pens included. The paper is smooth and crisp. Fountain pens feel great on it, and the ink looks great too. No feathering at all. Pencil tends to smear a bit and there isn’t enough tooth for pencils to feel good.

The case feels sturdy and the elastic is tight and holds the contents inside. The thin poly dividers are fun colors and the labels stick well enough.

Overall, I’m not impressed with the Yoobi index cards. They are thick paper not card. The ruling is too dark. They do okay with fountain pen ink but that’s not enough to make an index card for me. I do like the case and dividers.

We all know I’m a huge fan of the Baron Fig Confidants, and if you read my review of the 2018 planner you know I love their planner too. When BF asked if I wanted to review their dateless version, I immediately responded, “YES!”

To start the Dateless features all the same goodness of their regular Confidant- fabulous paper, lovely end sheets, awesome stitching, and lay flat binding. The page marker this round is slightly longer. I heat sealed mine with a lighter and you should too. Like last year’s planner, this one features a set of planner pages with some dot grid at the back of the book. A section of the dog gridded pages are perforated for easy removal.

I’m a huge fan of undated planners. I mentioned this in my review of the Dateless Vanguard. It makes sense for companies to make dateless planners and it is easy for those of us who use them to write in the dates. The paper in the Confidant accepts rubber stamps and markers really well, so adding decorative touches is easy and looks great. If you want to use a dip pen with some of your fancy Organic Studios sheening inks? You can do that. Want to use a rubber stamp with your fancy pigment rubber stamps? Works well with that too.

The set up of the planner portion features a spread for the month followed by 5 weeks of weekly spreads. It makes sense to have them all be the same length because folks could be starting the Dateless today and not on January 1st. I really like the flexibility. I wrote in each month’s spread then stamped out the dates for each weekly spread until I reached the week where the months overlapped. If I had extra spreads, I skipped those. I figure having a few empty spreads will give me some space to make notes for phone calls and other things.

The exterior of the Dateless is nice too. It features debossing of the same images on the Dateless Vanguard. The Dateless is a darker shade of gray than the dated version.

Anyway, the Dateless Confidant is a darn near perfect planner for folks who don’t want to be tied into a dated version or who work projects over the course of a month or two and find that the rest of the planner is wasted. The dateless fixes that problem, date the parts you’ll use and then date some more. You can’t go wrong with this paper- it is lovely with pens and pencils.