if you like: pelikan piña colada rollerball pen

The warm light of the sun washes the indoors in a golden glow, breaking the grey haze of late autumn. One moment there, gone the next, clouds keep rolling away. It becomes grey again, a bleak light that basks everything in a sterile glow. That cloud passes too. Sun barely shines inside now, the midday whisking it away from our windows. Then, a dark cloud appears over the glass towers. The sun grows starker in the distance, and the grey cloud slowly arrives. The first few splatters on the windows are barely noticed, but it turns into a pour quickly. Just like that, it’s gone too, leaving only the wet streets and a sunny sky dotted with clouds behind.

Some people have their brunch and their mimosas on Sunday mornings. Me? I have a photography session and piña coladas. Honestly, I didn’t care much about them until we went to a resort some years ago and spent most of our time there sunbathing, reading, playing table tennis, and sipping piña coladas. I was quite tired of school, trying to plan for the future, just existing in general, and it was one of the best holidays I ever took. It was also great because it’s very damp and chilly in the place I live right now, so it was great to spend a little bit of time just roasting under a very hot sun. I really like piña coladas now, it reminds me of a holiday very well spent.

It won’t come as a surprise that I had a little chuckle when I saw the name of this rollerball pen too. It’s Pelikan’s take on an ink cartridge rollerball, which, frankly, works pretty well. I have two of these Pelikan Piña Colada pens with the 0.7 tip, one of them in a metallic blue and the other one in a fluted black. They both look pretty cool, it’s a simple, lightweight pen that doesn’t really stand out in any pen case. It feels like the material is plastic to me, coated in something that would give that metallic effect.

Despite the name, I had low expectations of this pen. Rollerball pens that use fountain pen ink don’t have the best reputation, and I had never used a rollerball pen that I liked. The pen comes out of the package with some ink cartridges already in it, and you just have to push them in to make it work. Right away, it was a little strange to me that it came with a dummy cartridge that’s open on one end that the box instructs you to put in after the regular cartridge. I found that this genuinely helps with a more consistent ink flow, but still seems like an odd thing to do. It makes me question the design a little bit. Well, at least if you’re out and about, it’s an easy thing to swap that one with a regular ink cartridge and have an extra with you.

After you put the barrel back on, a rubberized grip section awaits you. It has a very distinct triangular shape, which is a little confusing. I tend to rotate rollerball pens around to get ink a bit more evenly, like you would do to a ballpoint (does this make sense? Am I the only one doing this?). You can’t really do that with this pen. This is not a dealbreaker for me, but it does force your grip to a very certain position. I’d like to use this pen for a couple of years to see if the rubber grip becomes sticky or accumulates dust, though it has been okay in the almost three months I had it.

And that’s it! Those are the only negative things I can say about this pen, because the rest works pretty well. I decided to put different inks into the two pens I have, the blue is inked with the stock cartridge it comes with (also blue) and the black one is inked with Diamine Autumn Oak. This was an interesting test, because I am not sure if the other ink is regular fountain pen ink. I thought it might be Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue, but that is supposed to be quite dry. This ink is very well-lubricated, it almost feels like a gel. It flows out of the pen freely, with no skipping or any other issues. I had this pen inked for over two months (temperatures ranging from very hot to mildly cold) with occasional use, as I simply don’t really use rollerballs, and it never had a problem with skips or dry starts.

The pen does behave slightly differently with regular fountain pen ink. Diamine Autumn Oak is a good overall ink in my opinion, it’s not too dry or too wet, shades nicely. I like using it, so I decided to ink it up in the rollerball to see how it’ll go. At first, I didn’t put the dummy cartridge and had a whole different experience. It was scratchy, and quite noisy too. It skipped every few words. Now, it writes with no pressure and stopped skipping completely. After putting in the dummy cartridge, it became better, even though it is not behaving as good as the blue pen does with the blue ink cartridges from the package. The black pen is also newer, so I’m hoping that it might go away after a while.

Overall, I like this pen. I think I’ll keep one in my pen case to take to school. It’s another way of using beloved fountain pen inks. I prefer the fluted barrel over the smooth metallic one, though I saw that the black comes in olive green as well. That’s a really pretty one. I think this is a good pen, especially for the price, that works well and fills quite a specific place in the pen selection. It’s a much better option than the regular rollerball pens that are mostly not refillable and you have to throw them away.

Thank you for reading! The song won’t be a surprise to anyone, I did spend the entire day singing it though… Thank you so much to people who sent the kindest emails, I have read them all but I am taking a bit of time to answer because I want to make sure I have time to think and put the same effort that you have. It made my entire year!

Disclaimer: As a part of the Oxford Ambassador program, I was sent these products to create content. All opinions are my own.