Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter Review

Highlighters — 11 October 2010

Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter

I almost forgot hat I had these Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighters that I bought a few weeks ago, so I figured I should get this review written up already. I picked up just the yellow version from Amazon, but they also have a 5 pack of these that comes with pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green

Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter Tip

The Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighters have a fairly modern , look to them with the partially clear body and cap and the visible liquid ink chamber. The cap itself is fairly tight-fitting so removing it and placing it back on take a little bit more force than one might think, and it also doesn’t always give you that reassuring “snap” sound to confirm that the cap is properly locked on.

Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter on Binder Rings

One of the more interesting features of this pen is at the back of the body where there is a hole in the top, which at first I couldn’t figure out what to do with besides maybe throw on a lanyard. Once I read a bit more about them, I discovered that the holes were actually there so you could place them on the ring of a 3-ring binder. The binder pictured above is a very cool and environmentally friendly 3 ring binder by ReBinder. I think this is a great idea that will probably go a long way in helping people not to misplace their highlighter or worry about having to carry it around.

Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter in Text Book

The highlighted text above shows the results of using the Sharpie Accent Liquid highlighter in a standard text-book, although the scan looks a bit lighter than it does in person, it is close to being accurate. Fro my tastes, the highlighter seemed a bit wet for the type of paper you find in a normal paperback book, and the page puckered a slight bit, although it did not show through the other side of the page.

Sharpie Accent Liquid Highlighter on Different Inks

When I tried out the highlighter on a few different inks in my Black n’ Red notebook, I got mixed results as you can see above. The best results came with a standard ball point pen that had no smearing, while ironically, the worst (most streaky) results came with the Sharpie pen. In the middle of the pack, the gel ink pen that I tested on was OK and only showed minor streaking. Each of these was done with a dry time of 30 seconds before running the highlighter over the ink, which I think should be enough time to simulate someone taking notes and then wanting to highlight that text. On the paper in the Black n’ Red notebook there was absolutely no show through and no puckering of the paper.

Overall, these highlighters were not all that I was hoping for, but they were serviceable and do a decent job at what they were intended for. Again, I think the best thing about them is actually the nicely designed hole in the top of it for attaching them to your 3 ring binder.

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About Author

OfficeSupplyGeek

http://derekspensandpencils.blogspot.com ThirdeYe

I’ve been planning to do a highlighter comparison on my blog for the past few months now, which is nearing completion. I’ve been testing the longevity of a few highlighters in a test comparison. A quick spoiler, this one fared the worst and ran out of ink the quickest. I much prefer the regular Sharpie tank highlighter. I’ve also noticed that the ink is indeed very juicy which can cause the page to pucker and wave like you mentioned. I’ve found that it worked great when highlighting pages in textbooks with a glossy high quality paper.
http://www.officesupplygeek.com OfficeSupplyGeek

@ThirdeYe – That sounds interesting, Im looking forward to seeing that. Makes sense that these might run out kind of quickly considering how much ink they put down, or maybe its how much ink the paper absorbs.
PointSpecial

Funny… I actually just started using some old Sanford Accent highlighters last week… and when I say old, I mean OLD… like, 6 or 7 years at the least, if not 10+ years. I THINK these were from when I was in high school (prior to 2000), but even if they were college, that would be at least 5 years ago.

Notably, these are Sanford, not Sharpie… I’m not sure when Sanford ceased to be, but they certainly don’t brand the Accent highlighters under that brand any longer!

Interestingly, I still got pretty good lines. As they went along, I had to shake it a bit to get the full line, but for something that old, I was skeptical at best.

I have thrown away many other highlighters from the same era that dried out years and years ago… but these still work fairly well!
http://www.officesupplygeek.com OfficeSupplyGeek

@PointSpecial – That is pretty impressive!
PointSpecial

Follow-up:

After a week or two of use, I’ve noticed how the quality has declined. I know I kept one of the highlighters open overnight and it dried out quite a bit. So it isn’t as good as it had been when I started using it a few weeks ago… but it’s still pretty impressive that they work at all!
http://www.officesupplygeek.com OfficeSupplyGeek

@PointSpecial – Thanks for the update, I guess after such a long time that is to be expected.
Bonnie

So, I have a few of the Sharpie-branded highlighters as well as the Sanford-branded highlighters, and as much as I like the way the highlighters themselves work and the bright color you tend to get with them, the oversaturation (you pointed out above) was a downer.

More importantly to me, though- I left a couple of these guys in a backpack in my car in direct sunlight once upon a time, and they… boiled over, for lack of a better term (the Sanford-branded ones). Disturbingly enough, they also seemed to have a tendency to mildew- at the bottom of the tank near the nib, mildew would grow (both in and out of the tank). As odd as it was- that, er, didn’t affect the color at all (hey, when you need a highlighter, you need a highlighter!).

That said, I love that you can tell when they’re running out, as opposed to “normal” highlighters.
http://www.officesupplygeek.com OfficeSupplyGeek

@Bonnie – That IS disturbing that you could get mildew growth in the tank, I never even thought about or considered that as a possibility, but I guess with a liquid involved that has to be something that could happen. I do agree though that the ink window is nice so you know when you are close to running out. THanks for stopping by and sharing all of that info.