Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from these pens beyond a nice assortment of colors at a cheap price. However, these pens blew my expectations out of the water. While not perfect, these pens are great for the price and quality! I'd say they're a good replacement for the name brand at a much more reasonable price point. Here I'll discuss some specific points that I like about the pens, and then I'll get into the cons.
PROS:
WRITING: 10/10
These are genuinely the best felt tip pens that I've used to write. I've used sharpie's felt tip pens, paper mate's felt tip pens, the felt tip pens from smaller brands, and these Amazon pens blow them out of the water. These glide across the paper with just enough resistance to give good feedback. They're not overly hefty like the other felt-tip pens that I've used, where it feels like there's a lot more oomph behind controlling them. The felt-tip portion of the pens, which sticks out of the pen in a soft V-shape as opposed to being partially hidden by a metal or plastic circular piece, also makes them last longer when their felt tips inevitably shrink from usage. It also allows you to color with them and more easily control the width of your pen strokes if you're using these to color.
COLOR VIBRANCY: 9/10
Now let's get this out of the way - these pens are NOT as vibrant as competing brands, specifically Paper Mate. However, that's understandable for the cheap price point and doesn't bother me. But even beyond that, these pens are still very vibrant! I was pleasantly surprised by how well most of the colors popped for how cheap they are. The colors do not have official names that I could find, but going by the color names I decided to use: Light pink, hot pink, dark purple, cobalt, sky blue, lavender, seafoam green, mocha, all pop on paper and are very vibrant. I don't think my picture of the colors really does justice to how vibrant these colors appear on white paper in real life. Not all of the colors included are vibrant (hence why a point was docked here), but the ones that are vibrant look fantastic.
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CONS:
COLOR VARIETY: 6/10
For the cheap price point, getting 24 colors is great! I don't have any complaints there, this is a fantastic offering from Amazon. However, what I will complain about is the arrangement of colors they decided to include. 7 of the colors are some variation of pink, while 5 of the colors are some variation of blue, meaning that half of this pack is taken up by variations of pink and blue. This leaves room for only 3 variations of brown, 2 variations of purple, 2 variations of green, and one variation for everything else (yellow, orange, red, light grey, black [though it's understandable for black to only be represented once]). I think less of the pack should have been taken up by pink and blue variations, as it would have been nice to see other variations of yellow and orange. I think yellow especially could have used more representation, as the included yellow color is so bright that it's extremely difficult to see on white paper. I believe foggy pink could have been left out of this set as well and been replaced with a variation of yellow, as foggy pink is also incredibly difficult to see and read on white paper. It's the same case for pastel blue, which is very difficult to read due to how bright it is.
BARREL COLORS: 6/10
For the most part, the barrel colors represent well-enough the color that the pen writes. However, there are a few pens where the barrel color is somewhat off from the color that the pen writes, which occasionally causes confusion. Some of the barrels appear unexpectedly darker than the color the pen writes, or unexpectedly lighter than the color the pen writes. This has caused me confusion enough times that I felt the need to mention it in this review (I normally do not factor the barrel colors of pens into my reviews/opinions of them since I rarely encounter this issue). I don't expect barrel colors to perfectly encapsulate the color of the pen, but they should at least be close enough to not cause confusion like this. As an example, when testing out the pens initially (as I did in the included photo with the colors of all the pen colors in the set), I initially thought that mocha was a dark pink or purple color and that cafe was a dark purple color due to their barrels, hence why they appear after the hot pink color and not with the brown at the top of the paper. I've included the mocha and cafe pen barrels and the colors they write to give an example of this in a separate included image. The brown barrel looks brown, but the cafe and mocha barrels only somewhat resemble brown. I believe the effect is stronger in-person.
Additionally, there are two pens whose barrel colors are drastically different from each other, but the color they write is virtually the same. This caused me so much confusion when testing out the pens for the first time and naming the colors they write that I gave the two separate pens the same name (dusty pink). This effect illustrates this barrel color problem perfectly in my eyes, and for this reason I included a photo of the two separate dusty pink pen barrels and the color they write above them.
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OVERALL REVIEW
Despite the included cons, these are some fantastic pens. They write better than competing brands with great vibrancy, at the cost of less color assortment and funkier barrels compared to competitors. However, I don't think the cons of the pens outweigh the pros. These are fantastic pens for budgeting students and artists alike, especially for the quantity and quality that you get.
It's important to state though that other people's reviews mention quick dry-out for these pens. I've had my pens for a few months, and I use my pens sparingly, but I have seen some minor dry-out for my frequently used pens. If you use your pens very often or for long bursts, I'd be careful about buying them. I only use mine as a student for making flashcards, which probably gives them more life due to my very infrequent usage of them. I'm not including dry-out in my review since I haven't encountered this issue majorly, and so I can't really speak on it.
Also, these pens come in a small cardboard box which is not ideal for storage, so make sure you have storage for them ready.
Sara Prue
Emily F.
katie