Uniball Signo 207 Ink Drying Test
By
My original writing sample from the first Uniball Signo 207 review
Recently I had a comment on my first Uniball Signo 207 review regarding the drying time for this ink on different papers. When I went back and looked at the review, I realized that I never did any kind of test to see how quickly these pens dry. So Luis, here is an update to take a look at the Signo 207 on some different paper.
Now the paper that Luis specifically asked about was the Mead Reinforced Filler Paper, which he used and had a terrible time with the Signo 207 ink smearing on it. Since I didn’t have that exact paper, I thought I’d start out by looking at some of the other Mead products that I had on hand to see how the Uniball Signo ink handled on those. First up was the Mead Grad Recycled Spiral Bound Notebook:
Mead Grad Recycled Spiral Bound Notebook
When I did the first few tests on this paper, I immediately saw what Luis was talking about with the dry time here. Not to say that this paper is exactly the same as the paper he was using, but there were some serious issues with how long it took the ink to dry on this paper. Having seen this extreme example, I was sure that I would need to continue my testing on some other notebooks to see if the results were different on other paper. One thing to note on this and all of the samples is that there is actually a color tested that for whatever reason didn’t show up in the scans, which was the pink ink. It’s the last writing sample on each page, so its hard to notice it is even not showing up.
Next I thought I’d try the Miquelrius Graph Paper Notebook because I always felt like the paper was good with some of the more wet inks out there. As you can see from the scan below, this paper didn’t let me down anywhere near as much as the Mead Recycled notebook paper. There was a slight bit of smearing noticeable with the black, blue, and red ink, but not so much on the others. Overall, I think that all of these inks did pretty well in this notebook. Check it out for yourself:
Miquelrius Graph Paper Notebook
Next up is one of my more frequently used papers, which is the paper found in my Levenger Circa Notebook. Since I use Levenger paper on a daily basis, I am pretty comfortable with knowing what to expect from it, and I have not had much of a problem with any inks that I’ve used on it. To my surprise, the Signo ink showed a little more smudging than I would have expected on this paper. Most of the colors showed a bit of smudging after a few seconds, but none were what I would consider really bad or streaky.
The one paper that I was probably the most anxious to try this test on was the 90g paper in my Rhodia Web Notebook. This is by far my most favorite paper to write on because it is so smooth, and has almost zero feathering, bleed through, or show through with any ink, however it does tend to take inks a little longer to dry on this paper. The inks took a few seconds to dry on this paper as you can see in the scan below, and again, it looks like the blue and black color inks were probably the worst performing.
Rhodia Web Notebook 90g Paper
The last paper I tried the writing samples on was another selection from Mead. I figured that since their paper was the paper that initiated the whole conversation, I should throw one more variation of their product into the mix. This is the paper found in their Mead Five Star Primer coil bound notebook. Surprisingly enough, the paper in this Mead notebook turned out to be one of the best of the group to go along with the Uniball Signo 207 ink. Even the blue, black, and red inks that smudged noticeably on the other papers performed really well with minimal smudging, check out the writing sample below.
Mead Five Star Premier
Overall I would say that the Mead Five Star Primer and the Miquelrius were the top two notebooks to use with this ink, while the Mead Grad Recycled was probably the worst, and the Levenger and Rhodia notebooks fell towards the middle of the pack. Obviously there are plenty of other papers out there that could have been tested, but I didn’t want this to be the War and Peace of reviews, so I had to stop somewhere.
Some other factors to take into consideration are the pressure you exert when you write on the paper, a heavier hand that puts more ink on the page is likely to take longer to dry than with someone who is a lighter writer. Also, the dry time is obviously going to be a bigger issue for someone who writes left-handed since they will be dragging their hand across the freshly written ink before it really has a chance to dry. The other thing to think about with these pens are that one of the key characteristics about them is that they were designed to be highly resistant to forging and fraud, so the ink is a little different from that of your standard pen.
Hopefully these findings will help you to decide which paper might be the best for you school or home office supplies inventory if you are using the Signo 207 pens, or at least help you to kind of benchmark these papers against something that you have that might be similar Also, for those of you who never saw it, here is a link to my original review of the Uniball Signo 207.
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Thank you so very much for this detailed review. I can now be at peace knowing that the Office Supply Geek took the time to answer one of my queries. I will definitely recommend you to anyone who gets into the hobby.
Do you think there’s a problem with the pen if at times it doesn’t write? Because it also does that. But that’s what I get for buying it from an Office Depot that was closing down. It was discounted and it came bundled with other types of Signos, thinner, that ended up being deficient as well, writing wise. But I don’t want to waste anymore of your time and thanks for taking the time that you already put into this.
Thank you, gracias, et merci beacoup.
Hey, this was interesting…great timing, too. I’ve been using a 207 as my desk pen for the last couple of weeks. Last night, I was writing up a grocery list on a cheap Staples notepad and noticed for the first time that I was getting some smearing.
I don’t have much in the way of quality paper, but after seeing some of your results, decided to see what I would get with the paper I do have. Tried the pen, a .07mm, on the Staples pad, a TOPS reporter’s notebook and a Leader legal pad. Took about a second to dry on the Staples pad and legal pad, and about 1-2 seconds on the reporter’s notebook.
And you were right about the pressure. The lighter I wrote, the faster it dried.
Thanks for the review. I’m a lefty and I’ve tried a whole heap of pens, and the 207 is, without doubt, the worst I’ve tried for smearing (i.e. drying time). It’s lovely and smooth, with a consistent line, but I’ve found papers (specifically Moleskine organisers) where the drying time is well over a minute.
Having said that, my personal favourite is another Uniball pen… the Jetstream. It also has ‘unwashable’ ink, but the drying time is lightning fast; a second or less on most paper types. Amazing. The colour isn’t as rich, and the line isn’t as consistent, but it’s a very smooth pen and doesn’t smudge.
@Luis – Im glad I could help, and I’m always happy to try and do other experiments and reviews for those who dont have access to products for whatever reason, so no worries, its never a waste of my time. As for the pens not writing that is a bit surprising. For all the writing I’ve done with them, there has been a VERY limited number of times where I even got a faint skip, and I’ve never had one not write that still had ink in it, so it probably does have something to do with the pens being a leftover mix from a closing store. I’ve been in stores like that and I can imagine the pens being exposed to either great deals of dust and debris with the tips exposed, or being left in a either a freezing cold back room, or directly in some pretty hot light, or who knows how many other variables.
@tonyb – Interesting that you got such quick dry times with those two types of paper, thanks so much for sharing and adding to the results here.
@Kim – I feel bad for you lefties out there, my dad was a lefty so I saw the difficulty first hand. I’ve never had good luck with most Moleskine paper so its not surprising to hear that this ink does not work well with it. I agree about the Jetstream, those are some of my favorite pens. The ink is more like a ballpoint / gel mix, but they are awesome pens, I’ve done a few reviews here and always enjoy writing with them.