My handwriting has always been unusually light. So light that even though my words are clean, I have a hard time looking over my notes because the gray fades into the yellowness of the page, making them barely legible. I have a distinct memory of being a freshman in high school and apologizing to a math teacher for my notes being so hard to read. When he said, “That’s okay. Mechanical pencils always make students’ handwriting several shades lighter.” I had to inform him that unfortunately I in fact wrote my notes with a standard No. 2 pencil.
Regular pens have never been an option for me because my spelling is horrendous and I spend a lot of time erasing what I wrote. I can’t do that with a normal pen. That is, I couldn’t until I discovered erasable pens existed.
I’ve been through a handful of erasable pens at this point. One didn’t actually erase all that well, another was too thick and spread the ink across my notebook if I didn’t carefully hover my hand above the page like I was writing on an elementary school SmartBoard. But I think I’ve found the perfect pen now: the PILOT FriXion Clicker Erasable in .5mm thickness. It actually erases, doesn’t spread the ink around due to the thinness allowing it to air dry much faster, and most importantly has allowed me to reread my own damn notes since they’re finally an acceptable shade of black.
So as a pen? Perfect. Beautiful. Everything I could ask for in a pen. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have its downsides.
For one, they tend to be significantly more expensive than other pens. I spent about $5 on a three-pack in order to get three different colors in it and another $8 on a six-pack of black pens. $13 on nine pens is kind of ridiculous if all you’re trying to do is write. And while this is my first time using this specific pen, I’ve noticed that erasable pens tend to go dry fairly quickly, even within the same brand. I’m not sure if there isn’t as much ink in them, to begin with, or if they dry out faster due to their composition, but it is a concern to keep in mind. Overall, they’re still worth it to me because I have a water-soluble notebook that allows me to erase my notes with water once I’m done with them, and I trust this brand to work with that notebook.
Despite my concerns, I would recommend this pen to anyone who likes to use pens but also has the need to erase fairly frequently. They write smoothly and erase completely, which means a lot when it comes to erasable pens. Sure, they’re a little on the expensive side when compared to regular pens, but if you’re only buying replacement pens once a year or so it’s easy to not notice that cost in the long run. I certainly don’t handwrite enough nowadays to constantly be buying new pens, that’s for sure. So consider looking into PILOT’s FriXion pens the next time you’re at the store!