I love my micro tip pens but I do get asked from time to time to review pens on the opposite end of the spectrum. With a 1.6 mm tip size, the Zebra Tapli Clip Ballpoint is waaay out there compared to what I normally use.
How does a pen like the Tapli stack up to some of my favorites? Not very well. It is not just that it has a wide tip that I don’t care for it - if a pen is a good pen I will say so - it is that the performance is poor regardless of the tip size.
The ink is very messy when writing with the Tapli. You can see several blobs of ink on the page even in the smaller size photos. It is consistently bad, and the 1.6 mm tip actually made it worse because there was so much ink coming out of the tip. There was even some bleed through to the back of the page which I have only seen one other time with a ballpoint.
Once you cross the 1.0 mm threshold you really need to temper your expectations. There is only so much good that a tip size that large can do. Yes, it will be very smooth and probably dark, but the ink flow might also be unmanageable.
Do you have a ballpoint, gel, or rollerball pen 1.2 mm or greater that consistently works well for you?
