Tombow AirPress ballpoint pens, with writing sample

I picked these Tombow AirPress ballpoint pens up, as a novelty, recently for roughly AUD 5.40 each‡.

The writing instrument's technical design is pretty clever. Instead of using refills that are pressurised during manufacture, like those used in the Fisher Space Pen, the Tombow AirPress ballpoint pen leverages the force applied by the user on the ‘knock’ mechanism that deploys the retractable pen tip, to pressurise the ink chamber on the fly. Filled with an oil-based ink, this product promises (on its retail packaging, marketing images, etc.) to allow rapid writing, write even on wet paper and/or when the page is unsupported from below or when the writing surface is vertical.

I just tried writing an entire English paragraph — in a cursive hand, as well as my other, normal handwriting style — on a notebook that I held up with the page facing down, and the pen's tip pointing up, and this pen proved up to the task.

The product comes in a variety of colours, and even has a demonstrator version as well as a ‘stealth-look’ version. The barrels on the opaque models are rubbery, and are possibly apt to deteriorate and become tacky to the touch in several years' time. (I'm not sure about the material of the clear barrel, since I haven't opened it yet.)

As for the pen's writing output, at first I was apprehensive that the stated, nominal 0.7mm line width would be too wide for my preferences in any sort of everyday application of putting pen to paper. However, the pen actually proved to write as finely as a Japanese EF nib, in fountain pen terms; and it can probably do so in a damn Moleskine notebooks, without being subject to the pitfalls of feathering, etc.

All in all, a satisfying purchase for the price, something that could just be tossed into a knapsack as a just-in-case writing instrument and not worry about the jostling or rough and tumble to which it'd be subjected.

‡ Including incremental delivery charges, but not any apportioned international shipping ‘flagfall’ charge for the order, from Amazon Japan.