The Fisher CH4 is a astronaut pen, like the iconic Fisher AG7, with some slight changes. The AG7 remains the original, bu the CH4 is very much an authentic space pen that has been (and continues to be) used on manned space flights.
The Fisher AG7 is the Original Astronaut Space Pen. It’s the quintessential, iconic space pen that people think about when they recall the pen that supposedly cost millions of dollars to produce and sold for hundreds of dollars apiece (when the Russian cosmonauts were outfitted with pencils).
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The Sailor 1911 is the company’s most famous fountain pen and the mainstay of their brand. It’s normally seen as a $150-ish cartridge converter with a 14K gold nib, but it can be found for well under $100 on Amazon if you are OK with a Japanese import with limited warranty protection (
The Jetstream is one of the foundational pens in the category of modern Japanese pens. It’s a click retractable pen with a specially-formulated low-viscosity ballpoint ink. From the standard Jetstream knock-style office pen grew an entire category of pens with this excellent ink.
This pen is the standard Uni Jetstream, and is known by the maker, Mitsuibishi Pencil as the “Jetstream Standard.” There are dozens of related models — Jetstream Prime, Jetstream Premier, Jetstream Stylus — but this is the standard model. Even this comes in a large number of variants and colors, which we’ll get into.
The Sailor 1911 Profit Professor is an affordable version of the Sailor 1911 series. Selling for just about $30 but still managing to feature the iconic styling of the 1911 series, the Profit Professor is a very interesting offering.
The Professor is a has a screw-on cap and is a cartridge-converter fountain pen.
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Lamy’s T11 is a tiny rollerball refill designed for us in the Lamy Balloon, a rollerball pen for students. The T11 is like a small Lamy M63, but with a smaller, entirely plastic body. Like the M63, the T11 is designed for use with capped rollerball pens.
The Lamy Balloon is an affordable, smaller rollerball pen designed for students. It’s very similar to the Safari and Vista pens, but it’s smaller and more affordable.
The Pilot BRF-25-B-B is a 1.2 mm super thick ballpoint refill. This refill is generally not available in the US but can be ordered from Japan using Ebay, or similar service.
The BRF-25B-B is a 250 JPY refill with a metal body. It’s only sold in black. It uses a 1.2 mm super thick ball tip where the BRF-25BB-B uses a 1.6 mm writing tip.
The Pilot BRF-25-BB-B is a ballpoint refill. This refill is generally not available in the US but can be ordered from Japan using Ebay, or similar service.
The BRF-25BB-B is a 250 JPY refill with a metal body. It’s only sold in black. It uses a 1.6 mm super thick ball tip where the BRF-25B-B uses a 1.2 mm writing tip.
This refill is the metal version of the Pilot BRFN-30 series of ink. It uses Pilot Acro ink (an oil-based hybrid). The BRFN-10 is not sold in an extra fine model.
The BRFN extra fine is a 0.5 mm refill that is compatible with the Dr. Grip, S20, Ageless, Legno, and a few other pens from Pilot.
The Pilot BRFN-10M is a plastic refill that is commonly found in the Dr. Grip pens as well as the S20 executive pen. It’s a proprietary shape that only Pilot uses, which makes this refill hard to swap out in place of another refill.
The Ohto NBP-507R Promecha is a needletip, ballpoint pen that is similar to Ohto’s more-popular Horizon and Horizon EU pens. It has an all-metal body and a knurled-rubber hybrid grip that is similar to the Pentel Graph Gear 1000.
The Lamy Noto is an affordable, all-plastic ballpoint that the company released in 2008. The pen was designed by Naoto Fukasawa, who is most famous for his Muji compact disc player.
The Explorer is a new fountain pen from Pilot, released in early 2019. It’s very similar to the popular Pilot Metropolitan, but it’s made of a lighter, plastic body. Additionally the Explorer is a bit more expensive then the Metro, it’s lighter, and its wider.
Please note, Pilot had another Explorer, an odd ballpoint pen from the 1990s. That pen is rarely seen these days and seems unrelated to this newly released fountain pen.
The Z24 is a fountain pen converter built for Lamy fountain pens. It was replaced in 2017 by the Z28, which looks almost the same and functions identically. The Z24 is fully plastic and has a black middle section where the Z28 has a metal band in the middle. The Z24 is a twist-style converter with a proprietary shape designed to only work with Lamy pens.