After waiting for over two months, my Mark One (purchased post Kickstarter) finally arrived. The pen, by Studio Neat, is made of aluminium and features a ceramic finish and a custom click mechanism. It also comes with a Schmidt P8126 rollerball refill (the same kind that Retro51 uses in their pens), which is absolutely horrible, so I switched it with an OhtoFlash Dry 0.5 gel ink refill instead.

 

The pen comes in a cork box that is very pretty, but not really functional. If you have tons of spare room on your desk you can reuse it as a pen tray for the Mark One, but as I don’t the box will just go to recycling. I would have preferred a simpler box, of the kind that TWSBI or Lamy uses, but this is a great box if you plan to give someone the Mark One as a gift.

The Mark One box is held closed by a piece of cardboard that doubles as an instruction sheet for the pen. That’s a nice idea, and the sheet is well designed and clear.

The box without the sheet doesn’t have a sealing mechanism (it’s just two pieces of cork), so it’s not really built to be a pen case, just a pen tray.

I chose the white and copper Mark One, which is very popular based on the waiting times on the Studio Neat website.

The pen is very comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time. It looks heavy but is super light, and the ceramic finish makes it very grippy. The wide barrel helps ensure that you don’t slip into “death grip” mode even if you have a tendency to.

The click mechanism is excellent and very solid and satisfying to use. It’s also very far from silent. The pen tip doesn’t rattle, and the pen looks as gorgeous as the pictures make it appear.

The Ohto Flash Dry 0.5 gel ink refill (PG-105NP)  is a needle point, parker refill that dries in a flash. It’s very dark and produces a line that is slightly wider than the Uniball 0.5 gel ink refills, but it somehow doesn’t smudge. Even on Moleskine, Rhodia and Tomoe River paper the OHTO Flash Dry dries almost instantaneously. It’s a left hand writer’s dream, and an excellent gel ink refill in and of itself. I have no idea why this refill hasn’t gotten more reviews, since there are so few parker style gel ink refills to begin with, not to mention good ones or ones that dry in a second or less. Maybe it’s because I don’t think it’s the kind of refill that’s widely available. It is, however, totally worth the price and effort.

Here’s a sample from my journal (which is a Moleskine). New Moleskines don’t have the spidering problem that they used to have, and there is no spreading or smudging with this pen/ink combo. The show through is a more significant than with a Uniball UMR-85 refill (the Signo 207), but the line is also wider and a good deal darker.

Here’s a writing sample on a Field Notes, where the first line (“Mark One”) was written with the original refill, and the rest with the Ohto Flash Dry.

Here’s the refill, which is available at JetPens and CultPens (I am not an affiliate of either):

I highly recommend the Mark One, as it’s a beautiful pen that’s just a joy to use. I would recommend switching the Schmidt refill out for the Ohto Flash Dry 0.5, or just using the Flash Dry in any parker compatible pen that you’ve got. It’s one of the best refills out there, especially if you’re left handed or tend to smudge your writing.