Week 246 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2022-07-11.
I've become a bit of a pen snob over the past few years. It's been forever since I used a fountain pen, or even a technical pen, both of which I used a lot at high school.
Papermate Flair Medium
My favourite pen of all time though, is the Papermate Flair medium felt tip pens. Easy to write with and changes in pressure can give you the thinest of lines or the fattest. Before moving to digital note taking, the Papermate flair was my trusty companion alongside my many Moleskine notebooks. If you're wondering my favourite notebook was a red notebook with dotted pages.
Papermate also do some ultra fine pens but I find they too scratchy on paper and if you have lined, dotted or grid paper then the text is easily lost. It's the medium ones you want.
Apple Pencil 2
When it comes to working digitally, the Apple Pencil is the best stylus I've ever used. I've been through a few. Some dumb, some not-so-dumb, but none have really made it feel like you're putting pen to paper.
The original Pencil had a terrible charging solution, otherwise it seemed to be a really good device. The Apple Pencil 2 completely changed my opinion of the whole situation with it's magnetic charging capabilities.
The closest I've got to the sensation of putting pen to paper before was with the Pencil by fiftythree. It's a fantastic looking stylus that feels great, but proper support in the Paper app was dropped before I got my hands one one. fiftythree's pencil was shipped more like a carpenters pencil and had a great eraser feature that you enabled by turning it over to use the top as if it was a real pencil eraser. I'd love that feature for the Apple Pencil thinking about it...
I dabbled with the more traditional stylus and tablet combinations 20-odd years ago but they never really worked for me. The disconnect between the surface and the screen always felt odd, but with the Apple Pencil doing exactly what a real pencil would, I have no complaints about how good it is.
Tags: apple pencil, stationary