Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/the-wonderful-uni-ball-signo-g.html
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On a personal note, the “click” is gratifying, and the end of these pens provide a very satisfying chew.
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Never been a fan of black ink pens, unless i’m inking artwork. Not sure why, but blue ink looks much nicer with handwriting. Wonder if the blue ink is on sale too
Edit: It isn’t at $4.97. It’s not a bad price though
I love most every pen UNI produces. My current fave is their “build your own” line of writing instruments called “Style Fit.” You can get 3, 4, and 5 insert pen bodies and fill them with any combination of Signo gel pens, mechanical pencils, and Jetstream ink pens.
If you’re serious about writing instruments, I’d recommend you give JetPens.com a try and skip Amazon. Throw some money at the little guy that doesn’t screw their workers out of benefits or pitch surveillance tech to Federal agencies.
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I’ll second the suggestion to patronize Jetpens. They’re who I use and they’re great. I’ve been using them for years–used to order from a shop in Japan, but they went under.
These pens are nice, but I prefer them in the blue-black ink, @Grey_Devil.
I wish they still make the Signo Bit pens and inserts. 
Those were great little pens.
As far as cheap ballpoint pens my favorite used to be the gel ink Kilometrico pens, can’t find them here in the US and last time i used them was like… 15 years ago? It’s been a while, but they were smooth as hell and i loved using them. No idea if their current pens are still as good as i remember them being.
I’ve never heard of that brand, but that’s probably because I’m in the US.
Things rarely compare favorably with our memories. 
Yeh it was the latino competitor to Bic
These have been the go-to pens at work for a long time. One problem is they always disappear, except for the red ones. So one tactic you can use is replace the black or blue ink cartridge into the red pen, and you should always have a pen handy! 
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I bought some pink ones a while back. They even came with pink ink–which was of marginal usefullness. But, as you say, swap out the ink cart and you have a less pilfered pen.
One interesting thing about these pens is that they are made for writing checks. Hence the name Signo.
I use them because I’m a lab chemist. If you spill dichloromethane on an average gel pen’s writing you can say bye-bye to whatever you had documented.
Out of curiosity I’ve tested these pens with a few common solvents. They stand up to acetone, ethyl acetate, methanol, ethanol, hexane, toluene, dichloromethane and chloroform. DMF and DMSO nearly removed the ink but a very fine pink line remained.
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I did similar testing a long time ago with a bunch of pens. I didn’t have the wide range of solvents that you have, though. So, wow, cool.
The reason these pens write such a hard to erase mark is that they’re using a pigment based ink instead of a dye based ink like most pens use. That means that little colored particles physically attach to the surface upon which you’re writing. So, a solvent will have to either destroy the color giving properties of the pigment particles or mechanically detatch them from the surface. I had the best luck with detergent when I did my testing.
I also tested water, denatured alcohol (EtOH), Isopropyl alcohol, acetone, and xylene–IIRC. This was over a decade ago, so I don’t remember perfectly. I think I posted it to FB or G+ when I did it. Maybe I can find that…
I’ve found that the pens write very fluidly. However, only 3-4 out of 10 actually make it to the end of their ink reservoir before the plug up. The pigments would explain the pen’s rather poor longevity.
The 2016 Uni-Ball 206s are a little better. A fruity nose, with hints of chocolate and spice, and only the faintest rubbery aftertaste. Truly a connoisseur’s chew.
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