Signo RT .28mm Front Clip
As a huge fan of the entire Uniball Signo line, particularly the .5mm and .38mm multi pen versions I cant believe its taken me this long to get to the retractable version of the .28mm offering. I picked mine up in person from the Kinokuniya store in NYC, but you can also grab these via Amazon or via JetPens. In this review I’m just taking a look at the green, blue black, and red versions, but they come in a ton of other colors so hit those two links back there to see them all.
Signo RT .28mm Rubber Grips
Besides the obvious addition of a plunger or nock to eject and retract the tip of the pen, the other major difference between this and the stick version is the longer rubber coating on the grip section. On the stick version of the Signo .28mm, they have a very short rubber coated grip section that terminates before the space where the metal cone screws onto the tip. In the case of the Signo RT .28mm though, the rubber grip section actually extends up about 2 inches from the tip of the pen, leaving only about 1/16 of an inch right at the tip with no rubber coating. This definitely leaves more flexibility for various writing styles so if you are a high, medium, or low gripper this pen has you covered.
Signo RT .28mm tips
In the close up picture above you can see that little ring just above the pen tip that is the 1/16 of an inch that goes uncovered with the rubber grip. But the other point of looking at this picture is to see how tiny those tips are. Its amazing that a sharp pointy piece of metal like this can actually be dragged across a sheet of paper at a fairly high speed and produce such a minimal amount of scratch and drag response. I’m not saying that these Signo RT .28mm pens are going to be the smoothest pen you’ve ever written with because just about any pen with a tip of about .5mm or larger is going to be much smoother, however for a pen of this size its pretty impressive how it still manages to feel so smooth while writing, and also tends not to skip at all. You will notice in the scribble circles above there is some skipping but that is just due to me inadvertently lifting the pen from the surface of the paper.
Uniball Signo RT .28mm Review Writing Sample
Signo RT .28mm writing sampe
The quality of the writing experience with the Signo RT .28 is nothing but stellar. I’ve used these daily for a little bit now, and the majority of my experience with them was for marking up printed spreadsheets and presentations to make notes and identify edits to be made. The narrow tip size make these great for squeezing in notes or edits on any printed spreadsheet or document, but even taking notes on regular ruled paper the one time I did it with the blue black version was pleasant. The only downside from my experience with these was that there is a very minor bit of rattle that comes from the plunger mechanism if you write at a fairly fast pace. The slower you write though, the less noticeable that rattle is.
If you are in NYC, Kinokuniya is your best option to grab these in multiple colors. They are over on 1073 Avenue of the Americas, between West 40th and W41st streets, and when you go in hang a quick left and shoot down the staircase to enter Japanese stationery nirvana, but as I said before, you can also grab these via Amazon or via JetPens. if you don’t have a Kinokuniya store in your back yard.
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