What the difference between the Pilot Acroball and the Uni-ball Jetstream?
Marketing.
I’m a Jetstream super fan. Always have been, and always will be as long as they keep executing each pen to perfection. That said, if I were to take a blind writing test with the Jetstream refill and the Acroball refill in neutral barrels I don’t think I would be able to tell the difference in pure writing performance.
The Pilot Acroball is every bit the Jetstream’s equal in performance. In popularity? The Acroball is Pilot’s forgotten pen.
From day one, it didn’t seem that Pilot believed in this pen. In Japan, it launched as the Acroball and featured bright colored barrels that stood out on the shelf. In the US, it launched as the Easy Touch Pro, which looked as boring as the name. It doesn’t get more generic than that.
Under the hood, both the pens used the same great Acroball ink, a hybrid ballpoint ink made specifically to compete with the Jetstream. And it did! The ink performance is outstanding, but if a tree fell in the woods and … well, you get the point.
The Pilot G2 is the best selling gel ink pen in the world, which Pilot will not hesitate to mention. The Pilot FriXion is the best erasable gel ink pen on the market by a wide margin, and has the product line to prove it. The Pilot V-Series rollerball pens have been around for decades, are loved, and are supported by Pilot in various marketing campaigns.
The Pilot Acroball? It exists.
Barcode.sexy
That’s not to say Pilot has forgotten about this pen. It has the requisite barrel color variance, a few different ink colors and tip sizes, and even a premium barrel option. I admit that is a solid base lineup, but my contention is it warrants more. This ink was designed to compete with the Jetstream, and it does. But Pilot seems content to play second fiddle to the Uni-ball behemoth.
That’s their loss, because it deserves more.
I was happy for these 0.3 mm Acroball pens to become available in the Acroball T lineup so I could see how they stack up against some of the finer Jetstream pens. Performance-wise, they absolutely do. The lines are clean and sharp, and for an 0.3 mm ballpoint, it is as smooth of a writer as a tip size that small can be. They are great.
The only downside for the 0.3 mm option is that it only ships with black ink. You can order 0.3 mm blue refills separately, but it would have been nice to have one of the five new 0.3 mm barrels ship with a blue ink. The barrels are nice, with the “T” series offering a group of metallic/pearlescent plastic barrel colors. Nothing more than that, but thankfully the stock shape and feel of the Acroball is fantastic - especially the grip.
I love the Acroball, and I want more. Is that too much to ask?
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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