The Jetstream (0.7mm & 1.0mm): Love At First Write

Introducing, the Jetstream:

What can be said about the Uni-ball Jetstream that hasn’t been said thus far? This pen has become a staple in offices, schools, desks, purses, pockets, and the fluttering little hearts of over-enthusiastic pen lovers the world over. Since the Jetstream’s inception, Uni-ball has been compelled to make more and more types of the pen and has shown no signs of stopping. It has become one of their biggest worldwide sellers and an envoy to the West.

     

You know a pen is good when the simple fact of using it makes you feel like a professional in some way. The slippery, effortless nature of the tungsten ball’s interaction with the hybrid ink makes you feel wildly more important than you probably actually are. It brings up visions of a reporter hastily scrawling notes into his steno pad or a doctor at her desk, waving a pen, wand-like, over the page before producing a prescription. To me, there is crude kind of magic in that refill.
   

However, a pen is not simply its ink system. There is much more to it that captures our interest and admiration. Everything in a pen works separately and together to provide an experience that is unique entirely to it. That is precisely what we will be going over today.

Hey there, beautiful.

Construction:

The body of the Jetstream is well-constructed and monolithic. Utilizing snug fittings that hold each of its parts together firmly, you gain the impression you’re writing with a grease pencil and not a pen. The barrel has a rubberized finish to it that produces a pleasurable handfeel and a secure grip during feverish college notes or lax doodling sessions. The two clear “JETSTREAM” ovals on the barrel look fantastic but serve no other use than to be there for my thumb to rub along. Toward the tip of the pen, the body flares outward toward the tip. Four vertical windows stripe the grip, outlined by slight divots, giving you an easy way to peek at your ink levels without having to unscrew the tip.

Did I interrupt something?

The Jetstream’s metal clip, in style and construction, is much like that of other Uni-ball products (i.e. Vision Elite), which is to say, solid and reliable. While in use, the rounded nub underneath the clip sees to it that the pen relinquishes its cozy home easily and with no snagging. No one wants to suddenly rip a nipple-window into their pressed shirt while in the middle of a business meeting. This clip, if under a lot of stress, is more of the bend-but-not-break kind. Some clips fly off into the next room and wake up the cat once you tug on it a little too much.

Get a room.

The plunger on the Jetstream remains one of my favorite in the pen world. The action is smooth, confident, and comes accompanied with a satisfying, crunchy click to it. It has an outer housing that’s made out of metal. The very top of the plunger, nestled inside a slight depression, is a polished, plastic half-sphere, the color of which indicates the ink the pen uses. That little, adorable bubble is more useful than you might think. Countless times, while the pen was inside of a cup or a case, I could only see the very top of the plunger and still knew just what to grab. Communication is so important in a relationship.

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The tip has a snug fit on the hardened, clear plastic grooves of the barrel. There are six vertical grooves in the tip that seem to be just for style, like the Signo 207. If you are someone who likes to hold pens down close to the tip, this isn’t a great one for that. The pressure required to get a good hold combined with the slippery metal and the grooves makes for an experience not unlike trying to hold onto a greased marble. The insert deploys cleanly thru the tip and leaves no visible room between it and the inside rim.

Oh boy.

History and Performance:

The Jetstream’s performance is where it shines the most. This pen has gained almost all of its love and adoration because of how well it works and feels. I suppose most popular pens do, but the Jetstream was seen as a revelation at the time it came out, and even today. There were gel pens and liquid pens that were well-liked in the US in 2006. However, as for oil-based inks, one of the top picks was the Bic Atlantis.
      

Let’s face it. The last time the ballpoint had a major breakthrough was around the time The Bangles - “Walk Like an Egyptian” could be heard screaming from a ghetto blaster on the beach.  Don’t get me wrong, the Bic Atlantis is a fine pen. But it is very close to a lateral move when compared to something like the PaperMate FlexGrip, introduced back in 1987. The incremental upgrades in ballpoint technology since the mid-80s were seemingly dwarfed once the Jetstream came on to the market. Even if the pen itself wasn’t radically different, it felt that way and gained fans accordingly.
      

As for variety in the brand, there are many different types of the Jetstream pens out there. There have been dozens of different designs for the body that are quite different from the last. They come in 0.38mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm, and 1.0mm. The most popular sizes in the West are 0.7mm and 1.0mm. In Japan, 0.38mm is quite popular due to the small, intricate nature of kanji. Today, though, we’ll be talking about the 0.7mm and 1.0mm retractable versions only.

Note the dry time & the consistency of the line.

Writing with the Jetstream for the first time is slightly jarring. If you aren’t used to this oil-based, hybrid ink, you can’t sign your name without feeling like you need to slow down and go make sure it was the Glucotrol you took and not your daughter’s Adderall prescription. But once you get used to it, you write quickly and your fingers feel freer. The slightly wider body of the Jetstream feels nice between your fingers and helps you control your pen strokes more easily. My writing got more exact as I gained greater control over the pen and didn’t have to fight the surface of the paper. Even though the feel of the rubberized finish is pleasurable in your grasp, if your hands get exceedingly sweaty when you write, you may find the tips of your fingers sliding slowly down the pen or having to exert more force to hold it. Essentially, if you’re a slippery-fingered novelist with an Adderall problem, take heed.
      

One of the things you immediately notice about the Jetstream is how consistently it writes. Very rarely do you need to “jump start” your pen by drawing little chaotic balls of yarn. You can be confident once you pick it up that it will put down a solid, black line of ink that doesn’t railroad (show up on the page like this: || ) or skip. I have had railroading or skipping in the past, but I cleaned the ballpoint of the debris it picked up from the environment and it started working perfectly again. One area of writing that I have noticed an issue with the Jetstream involves writing on slick paper. For some reason, while writing on cheaper paper or paper that has a slightly slick finish to it, the Jetstream has skipped and randomly refused to write for a word. It’s like the ball won’t grip the paper and roll. A majority of the paper you get from dollar stores feels like buttered Saran wrap. That type of paper can cause some problems for the Jetstream, in my experience.
     

Both the 0.7mm and the 1.0mm have a dreamy, skating feel to their action. The 1.0mm has a wide ball that feels more stable against the paper while the 0.7mm feels perfectly precise for my cursive note taking. And note taking is exactly where these pens excel. Their deceptively long-lasting ink refill, effortless interaction with the page, and consistent, no-fuss performance makes them excellent workhorse pens. You can put 100 refills thru one and the only reason you’ll want to replace the virtually indestructible body is to get a new style or color.

Wrap-up:

Whatcha thinkin' 'bout? <3

When I first picked up this pen, before I really enjoyed collecting and testing them, I had primarily used Bic Stic pens. They were cheap, abundant, and no one wanted to swipe them. Once I tried the Jetstream, I wondered what else I was missing out on. Soon after, I set out down a road of compulsory pen collection that brought along with it a mind-numbing propensity to talk to other people about office supplies (or as I like to call them, objects thru which we can come to know a higher power).

This is where it all started for me-- the Jetstream.
     
Writing quickly became more than just getting down what I had to say or how well I could form my cursive letters. The focus fell on the pen, what it looked like, how it felt in the hand, how well it was built, how it was designed—how it made me feel to be writing specifically with what I’d chosen at that point in time.
          

Call me sentimental. Call me obsessive or histrionic. But the Jetstream was, and still is, a fine introductory course to mindfulness and pens.