BIC Round Stic Ballpoint Pens Review

A very sticky stic!
Overall
2

Summary

You won’t be able to draw a bright enough bottom line with this…

Pros

Very cheap…

Cons

Dull and does not last very long…

I just ordered more of those cheap BIC Round Stic ballpoint pens because our mechanics almost go through a box (12 pack) a week; I have a feeling that they eat these pens for lunch because I have ordered too many of these. So I visited Staples.com and ordered about ten (10) 12 pack boxes of these for the mechanics; it should last us for a month or two if we are lucky. It costs $0.89 for a box of twelve; for this price, we are not hurting at all even if the mechanics actually do eat them for lunch.

DESIGN & DESCRIPTION

These pens are about 5 and 7/8 of an inch in length and a little more than a ¼ of an inch in width (with the cap on). The ball pen point by itself is about ¼ an inch in length. The cylinder in which the ink cartridge goes is white and circular. There is not much that is special about these pens, but all that matters is they can write.

There are no rubberized finger grips like the Pentel R.S.V.P. ballpoint pens, so if your hands and fingers are slippery, you might have a hard time maintaining your grip on these pens. As for our mechanics, they all wear gloves so if they have to write, they take the gloves off and wipe their hands dry.

On the other side, there is a cap that cannot be unscrewed and you cannot (to my knowledge) replace or remove the ink cartridge (but why would you for the low price tag). There is also a clip on the cap of the pen for clipping onto a shirt pocket, binder, book, etc…

PURCHASING

Staples.com sells a dozen of these pens for $0.89 which is about 7 cents for each pen. I bought about 10 boxes of these; all of them are black since we only like to use black. You may find better deals than these from other retailers, but since we have an account at staples.com I always use them to make the purchase.

EXPERIENCE

I came across these pens when I first started my job and I used these for my daily writing needs for a while, but after many disappointing moments, I decided to switch. The problems I had with these pens were that they do not seem to last very long. And after a while of storage, they seem to need a lot of stimulation to get started again. But for our mechanics that go through boxes of these pens very quickly, I think these are perfect. I personally like the sharp point and vibrant color of the pens, and unfortunately, these pens are not my type. The color of the ink is a bit dull and even after retracing my own writing once or twice, it is not as bright and vibrant as I would like it. Our mechanics use these black pens for almost all of their writing they do like filling in their daily time-sheets, writing work orders, etc…

I like to put the cap on the rear end of the pen when I write because it puts some weight on the pens for better handling; that is just how I like it, but you may like it differently (as do our employees). Putting the cap on the rear end also keeps it from getting lost in this jungle of a shop that we have here.

It would have been a motivation for me to use these pens if they had finger grips to help keep the pen in place to provide the smoothest writing experience ever. Sometimes my hand’s sweat (in hot weather) so I needed something that would not slip out of my hands. But it is unfortunate that these do not have grips, and I do not expect these to have grips either because I would not want the price tag to increase.

I am not saying that these are the worst pens, but whenever I use these pens I think my handwriting is the worst ever (by the way, my handwriting is not one of the best either). Or maybe it is the same and these pens make it look bad. Who knows?

FINAL THOUGHTS

These BIC Round Stic pens are one of the worst pens I have used to write at work, school, and home. I would say that the saying, “you get what you pay for” is true in this case. We always keep these stocked for our mechanics because at the rate they go through pens will lead us to bankruptcy if we were to purchase higher priced ones. I would not recommend these for your daily office use, but if you have a shop like ours and your employees use a lot of pens then get these cheap pens.