A few weeks ago I picked up a few of the new Paper Mate Ink Joy 700 RTs along with a few other of the InkJoy models, and I completely forgot that I even had them to review. The recent review by Brad over at the Pen Addict reminded me that I still needed to review mine, so here we are today.
Paper Mate has billed the InkJoy series as being an incredibly smooth to write with, easy starting, and having crisp consistent lines. I do agree that this particular 1mm version that I tried was very smooth to write with, however I did notice some issues when it came to providing a clean crisp line. In my use of the pen (and as can be seen in the writing sample below) I experienced some situations where the line was not crisp and clean, and there were actually small globs or splotches of ink that were put down on the paper. In addition to a not quite perfect writing experience, the pens are a bit bottom heavy due to the plastic body and metal nose cone. It is not horribly unbalanced, but it does create a slightly heavy feeling in your hand which can lead to some writing fatigue.
The writing sample above shows some of the inconsistency I saw with the line that the InkJoy puts down. You can really see it at the top of each loop where I drew the chain of loops next to each color scribble. Another issue with these pens is my personal preference for what a true red ink should look like. The red with these pens seemed to have a bit more of a pinkish-orange hue as opposed to the ones that I compare it to in the bottom of the writing sample.
Personally I think that if you are looking for a nice hybrid ink ballpoint pen, the Uniball Jetstream is the way to go. They do cost a slight bit more, but you do get what you pay for.
