Friday, March 4, 2011

0 Pilot Coleto 5 Color - Blue Black, Aqua Blue, Apple Green, Cherry Pink, Apricot Orange 0.4mm

Coleto Writing Sample 1  Coleto Writing Sample 2
Sorry about the quality of these images! I was in a rush to get this post out before midterms overwhelm me!

Product: Pilot Coleto 5 Color Body Clear with 0.4mm cartridges in Blue Black, Aqua Blue, Apple Green, Cherry Pink, and Apricot Orange

Where to buy: jstationary.com for $3.75 for the body and $1.80 for the cartridges

Color thoughts:
  • Blue Black - Really like this color. It can be used for notetaking and looks really unique.
  • Aqua Black - I thought this color was going to be a lot lighter and closer to the color of water (like.. sky-blue-ish since it reflects the color of the sky...) but it's more like what people portray water really deep in the ocean to look like. I was surprised by the darkness of the pen and now close it was to a dark blue.
  • Apple Green - Very cute color! Reminds me of apples. =) It's a really soothing and happy color, but somewhat light so I wouldn't want to write large paragraphs with this. Too much eye strain...
  • Cherry Pink - So when I got this pen, I thought that it would be a "Cherry Blossom Pink"... Next time I will pay more attention to the actual name of the pen... That being said, it's my favorite color! It pops off the page and it's really pretty. I've been somewhat traumatized by red pens but I can use this color without wanting to run away screaming or hide under my bed.
  • Apricot Orange - Was kind of disappointing... =( I thought that it would be a really unique color but it looks pretty much the same as my Orange Signo DX. If you squint, you can say that the Signo DX is somewhat paler, but that's about it...
General thoughts:
This was, for me, a really expensive pen... and I'm kind of sad that I'm a bit disappointment by it. It's really picky about not only what type of paper it wants to write on, but also which section. The pens wrote fine without skipping for the first half of the page and then started to skip like crazy for the later half. Then I flipped the page and they wrote beautifully again. I'm not sure I've ever seen this behavior in pens... Ever. How weird! Also, my Aqua Blue skips a lot so I'm probably going to have to try cleaning the tip or something to encourage it to write smoothly. I notice myself holding the pen somewhat diagonally to try to get ink to flow smoothly. Because I usually hold my pen so that it's pretty much perpendicular to the paper, the new position puts a lot of strain on my hands so I have to take a break every 10 or so minutes. I also notice scratching with these pens that I don't notice in my other 0.4mm tips but I don't really mind that. Also, the ink is water... soluble. I usually don't care about how my pens react to water, but for the Coleto, if even one drop of water gets on the page, the ink dissolves. It's horrible. I am in constant fear of my cheat sheet dissolving because I started crying during the test. Just kidding, but it would be annoying if I accidentally spilled something on an important document I decided to write with the Coleto.

Other than the skipping problems (which are really frustrating!) and water solubility, this is a really fun pen. I love the variety of colors and the ability to customize it. The tops of the cartridges are the plungers so you can easily see which color you want to use. The plastic barrel seems somewhat fragile, but is smaller than I expected for a multipen barrel, which is great since I prefer pens with smaller barrel diameters. I also really like the grip.

What I use it for: MULTICOLOR NOTES! YAY! See below for a cheat sheet I did for a midterm.

Pros: 
  • Large selection of colors and tip sizes
  • Plunger is the top of the cartridge so can see which slot belongs to which color
  • Barrel is smaller than typical multipens (BIC) and the grip is pretty good
  • 5 pens in 1!
  • Really fun to write with.
Cons:
  • Picky about paper. Lots of skipping. =(
  • NOT WATERPROOF!
  • Really expensive! The cartridges are also really small so I doubt they'd last for long.
 Recommend?: Probably.

Coleto 1 Coleto 5 Coleto 7 
Coleto Notes

0 comments:

Post a Comment