Stone Pen

Falls short of expectations

This is a decent pen, however I’m unimpressed overall. It’s nicely weighted and has a very pleasant matte finish, yet the oversize barrel is almost too large and the obnoxiously wide pocket clip can be intrusive when writing. Its “Floating Ball” ink cartridge is reasonably smooth but looks and writes just like any other good quality medium tip ballpoint. (The one I received actually writes on the fine side of medium, imho.) Either way, its line width is definitely not 1.0mm as stated on Karst’s website. Although this ink outperforms gel pens on Karst Stone paper as claimed, it performed no better than other ballpoint inks I tried on Karst Stone paper. From my perspective, Caran d’Ache 849 ballpoint pens (which are also Swiss-made, btw) offer a better overall value despite their modestly higher price.

Just shy of perfection!

I love the feel of this pen in hand and it does noticeably cut down on ink smear! All around, this is a solid product and a great choice if (like me) you have made Karst planners a necessity.

Nice, but doesn’t do what it claims

Let me start off with the positives: the pen is well constructed, it feels nice in your hand, and has a smooth writing experience. The main problem is that, despite the claims on the site, it does, in fact, smear on the stone paper. I’m left-handed, which means I am constantly dealing with this issue. I was hoping this pen would solve that and I could finally use a pen instead of pencil with my Karst notebooks. Alas, as you can see from the photos, it is not as advertised, so back to pencils for me.