This will likely be different for everyone, but at JetPens we confidently recommend the Uni-ball Signo UM-151 as the best gel pen. It glides across the page whether you pick the reliable 0.5 mm tip size for everyday note-taking or the ultra-fine 0.28 mm for precise writing in tiny planner squares. Its ink is wonderfully vibrant and comes in an array of beautiful colors.

There’s more to the Signo’s ink than just appearances, though. Its pigment-based ink is water resistant, archival quality, and resists fading from light exposure. This makes it an excellent choice for writing checks, signing important documents, and anything else you want to stand the test of time.

The Uni Jetstream is definitely the best ballpoint pen for writing. It’ll undoubtedly change your mind if you think ballpoint pens are just low quality writing instruments swiped from restaurants and hotels. Like other ballpoint pens, the Jetstream can write on receipts and other surfaces that gel pens struggle with. And to make it even better, the Jetstream uses a low-viscosity ballpoint ink that provides a smooth, vivid, and consistent writing experience.

The Jetstream comes in several body styles, tip sizes, and ink colors. This includes the comfortable Alpha Gel Grip, as well as a shockingly fine 0.28 mm tip size that no other ballpoint pen can match. You can even get the Jetstream in multi pen form, which includes several ink colors. Some even have mechanical pencil components!

The humble Uni-ball Vision Elite is the best rollerball pen for writing. It creates a smooth, skip free, and satisfyingly dark line that makes it a pleasure to write with. The 0.8 mm tip size is silky smooth, while the 0.5 mm tip size has some feedback (the sensation of the tip on the writing surface) without feeling scratchy.

The Vision Elite uses a fraud-resistant, pigment-based ink that’s ideal for signing checks and legal documents. It’s also available in off-black colors that are unusual among rollerball pens.

For a heftier, more durable pick, consider the Tombow Zoom 505 Standard. Its aluminum body is well balanced, and it has a thick rubber grip for ergonomic comfort.

If you want your writing instrument to have the finest tip possible, the Pilot Hi-Tec-C is the best gel pen for you. Its 0.25 mm tip can write neatly in the tiniest spaces, from book margins to planner squares. The Hi-Tec-C is remarkably smooth considering the fineness of the tip, and it comes in a handful of bright colors.

However, we must warn that such fine tip sizes will feel more “scratchy” than those found on 0.38 mm or 0.5 mm pens. A smaller tip size has a smaller surface area that comes in contact with the paper, and it puts down less ink that would otherwise lubricate the tip. Additionally, the 0.25 mm Hi-Tec-C may need to be primed with a scribble on a piece of scratch paper to get the ink flowing.

The Zebra Sarasa Dry is the fastest-drying gel pen. Even the largest and wettest 0.7 mm tip size dried in less than five seconds on Rhodia paper, a paper that inks tend to dry slowly on. The Sarasa Dry puts down a wonderfully saturated line, writes smoothly, and comes in three tip sizes. Like many other Sarasa pens, this gel pen has a hinged clip that opens wide so it slides easily over notebooks and pockets.

As with many water-based gel inks, the Sarasa Dry smears readily beneath highlighters. Color-coders should consider using ballpoint pens like the Pilot Acro and Acroball instead. Oil-based ballpoint inks won’t react to water-based highlighter inks, so you can go over your notes without worrying about smudges.

The most comfortable ergonomic pen will differ from person to person, with the best options depending on factors like hand size. Even so, we think the Uni-ball Signo 207 Premier is the best ergonomic pen for most writers. It uses the same ink as other Signo Gel Pens, so it flows freely and glides across the page with little pressure. The pigmented ink is satisfyingly dark regardless of how lightly you write. If you hold your pens tightly, its squishy grip will relieve your achy fingers. In addition, the 207 Premier has a lightweight body with a low center of gravity that won’t tire your hand as you write.

If you prefer ballpoint ink, the Pilot Dr. Grip is another excellent ergonomic pen. It has a carefully balanced barrel, and its double layer grip design is moderately soft without being too squishy or too hard.

The Zebra bLen Ballpoint Pen provides the most comfortable writing experience. Most people are unaware of how visual and audible clutter can affect their focus, but the bLen was created with stress-free writing in mind. The name is inspired by the Japanese word burenai (ブレない), which means non-vibrating. This carefully engineered ballpoint pen eliminates all the little rattles and vibrations which can cause frustration and distract us from writing.

Its minimalist design is beautiful and calming to look at, and will fit seamlessly into any aesthetic. We especially enjoy Zebra’s smooth and vibrant low-viscosity ballpoint ink, which is darker and smoother than regular ballpoint inks. The bLen is also available as a three-color multi pen.

The Pilot FriXion is by far the best “erasable” pen. This remarkable pen offers the best combination of vibrancy, consistency, and “erasability.” It accomplishes this with a special thermosensitive ink that writes just like any other ink, yet disappears without a trace when rubbed with the hard “eraser” on the end of the pen. The friction generated by this rubbing action raises the temperature of the ink and turns it invisible.

The Pilot FriXion comes in several colors, tip sizes, and body designs so that you can find one that fits your style. FriXion ink technology can be found in highlighters, markers, and stamps.

For those who frequently switch between writing and using a touchscreen, a good stylus pen like the Uni Jetstream Stylus is a must-have. Not only can it reduce finger pain from repetitive swiping on digital devices, but it lets you change work surfaces without losing track of your pen. The Uni Jetstream Stylus comes equipped with a replaceable capacitive stylus made with silver-covered fibers. This lets it move across your screen more easily than typical rubber styli.

Paired with the Jetstream’s low-viscosity ballpoint ink, this pen offers a smooth experience on paper and on a screen.

The Pentel EnerGel is well-known as a left-handed gel pen favorite, and for good reason. Its ink is beautifully vibrant and glides smoothly across the page, yet it also dries quickly for a smudge-free writing experience.

It comes in many different designs to suit your personal style, from the super cute Clena to the business-appropriate Philography. No matter which EnerGel you decide to pick, it’ll be available in several ink colors and tip sizes.

It may not look like much, but the Pilot Multi Ball is a fantastic rollerball pen for left-handed writers. The medium tip size dried within four seconds on Rhodia paper, which tends to make inks dry slower. The fine tip size dried within two seconds!

The Multi Ball isn’t just a great pen for paper, though. It’ll write on nonporous surfaces too, including glass, ceramic, plastic, and almost anything else. The fine tip size is perfect for signing the backs of credit cards without smearing.

You may think that there must be a tradeoff to achieve this multi-surface marvel, but Pilot didn’t make any sacrifices on the writing quality. It’s delightfully smooth on paper and produces a deep, dark line every time.

The Uni Propus Window Q-Dry is the best highlighter for left-handed writers. Highlighters are often prone to smudging because of their wet inks, but the Q-Dry dried within a single second on Rhodia paper in our tests. Inks dry slowly on Rhodia paper, so this quick dry time is an incredible feat! Left-handed writers can highlight pages without the risk of smears. Additionally, this highlighter has a window in the chisel tip, so you can see where you’re highlighting. A fine bullet tip on the other side is great for underlining or circling key terms.

Just about any pen can work well for journaling, but the JetPens team is especially fond of the Zebra Sarasa Clip. Its vibrant pigment ink is smooth to write with and both water and fade resistant, so it won’t disappear if you accidentally spill a drink on your journal.

If you keep a journal like the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal that you update with quick notations throughout the day, the Sarasa’s fast-drying ink will help prevent smudges. What really sets the Sarasa Clip apart, though, is its namesake clip. It opens wide to let you securely fasten the pen to a notebook so you’ll always be ready to make a new entry.

The Coleto is a multi pen that’s perfect for planning. It features the same vibrant water-based ink and precise needle point as the Pilot Hi-Tec-C, but in the form of a customizable multi pen. You pick a pen body, then fill it with the exact tip sizes and colors you want. You can mix and match refills to build your ultimate planner pen.

For example, you can combine a five-component body with three 0.3 mm gel ink refills for writing in planner squares, and two 0.5 mm refills for notes or bold headers. Or you can fill a three-component body with a mechanical pencil component, eraser component, and a black gel ink refill for a well-rounded writing instrument.

These Kuretake ZIG Clean Color Dot Markers bring fun and versatility to journaling and planning. We’re big fans of the double-sided version, which features a 0.5 mm hard plastic tip on one end and a wonderfully squishy dot tip on the other.

Depending on the pressure you use, the dot tip can make marks from one to five millimeters wide, though we should warn that pressing very hard can put a lot of ink on the page and cause bleedthrough. It’s easy and fun to make quick flowers and other fun doodles, or—for a slightly more practical use case—to highlight important dates in your planner or calendar. You can even make expressive brush-like strokes with the dot tip by varying the pressure as you draw!

The best double-sided highlighter for journaling and planning is the Kokuyo Mark+ 2 Way Marker Pen. It features a colored highlighter on one end and a complementary fineliner on the other. The highlighter end has a 4.0 mm chisel tip with ink that stands out without being overwhelmingly bright. The color of the fineliner end depends on which Mark+ you pick. The Gray Type Marker Pen has a gray hue tinted to match the chisel color, while the Color Type has a darker version of the chisel color.

The fineliner is dark enough to stand out even when highlighted over, allowing you to use the same pen to write and highlight notes in your schedule.

Be sure to check out Kokuyo Mark+ Highlighters, too.

If you take notes and regularly highlight them, the Sarasa Mark On is an absolute necessity. Although it looks just like the Zebra Sarasa with its binder clip, its ink is completely different. It’s specially formulated with a much higher degree of water resistance, so that it almost never smears when highlighted. Even the Zebra Mildliner, which is notorious for smearing gel ink, barely budged in our testing.

The Zebra Justfit Mojini Line is the most versatile student highlighter we’ve tried at JetPens. It didn’t smear the water-based or oil-based inks we tested it with—and it didn’t smear inkjet-printed handouts, either. One caveat: we used specific pens and inks for our testing, so be sure to test the highlighter with your pens before you do a lot of highlighting.

The JustFit Mojini Line has a flexible chisel tip that follows the curves of book pages, so your highlighted lines stay neat. Choose from five vibrant colors.

The Pilot Board Master is the king of school whiteboard markers. Its highly pigmented ink delivers intense color that’s easy to read from across the room, and its thick tip is easy to control. Its dry-erase ink wipes away cleanly without leaving behind “shadows” on the whiteboard.

Best of all, the Board Master has an ingenious twin pipe feeder system that equalizes the pressure inside and outside the marker. Lines remain crisp, vibrant, and consistent down to the last drop of ink. You’ll never have to struggle with faint whiteboard marker lines again! Once the marker does run dry, you can refill it, cutting down on waste. Even the tips are replaceable.

The best pen for your everyday carry kit varies depending on how you approach EDC, but we have to put in a plug for the Fisher Space Pen. Its pressurized ink can write underwater, over grease, and in extremely hot or cold temperatures.

Go with the sleek Fisher Space Pen Bullet if you prefer a compact EDC kit. The pen measures in at under four inches when closed, so it slips easily into pockets or bags. With the cap posted on the back of the barrel, the pen extends to a comfortable size. While the pen doesn’t come with a clip, you can purchase one separately to make it even more portable.

We have to pick the BIGiDESIGN Ti Arto EDC as the best metal pen for everyday carry due to its durability and versatility. This machined pen is made from solid titanium, a phenomenally strong material that can easily withstand the hard knocks of daily carry.

More importantly, the Ti Arto EDC can use almost any refill you want to try. An adjustable clutch mechanism in the nose cone securely holds refills in place, with no tip wiggle to district from your writing experience. The Ti Arto EDC also features a telescoping barrel that lets you adjust the length of the pen to match the refill inside.

If you like the Ti Arto EDC but want different features, BIGiDESIGN makes other great pens. The Ti Click EDC has a similarly telescoping barrel with a handy click retraction mechanism for quick notes.

The Tombow Fudenosuke is an excellent starter brush pen for lettering beginners. It has a firm elastomer tip that’s easy to control and creates thin or thick lines with variations in pressure. This brush pen comes in a variety of vibrant colors. The standard pens use water- and light-resistant pigment ink for lettering pieces that last. The neon pens pop on the page, but their inks are not water or light resistant.

More experienced calligraphers can reach for the Fudenosuke fitted with a soft tip. It’s more responsive and produces slightly thicker lines with pressure. It’s not available in as many colors as the hard tip Fudenosuke, but the pastel colors are still useful for adding colorful details to your next artwork.

The Sakura Pigma Micron is a fantastic fineliner for lettering (and art, too!). Its precise tip allows letterers to make consistent marks for drawing monoline styles and elaborate letterforms. Its rich, pigment-based ink delivers vivid color that is archival quality and waterproof, so your lettering will last for years. This iconic pen comes in several colors and fineliner tip sizes ranging from 003 (0.15 mm) for intricate embellishments to 12 (0.7 mm) for text that stands out. Pigma Micron tips can be a little delicate, so use a light hand and don’t press too hard while lettering. Otherwise, you might bend the tips.

Other tip types including bullet tips, plastic nibs, and brushes are also available.

The best dip pen for lettering is the Rohrer & Klingner Glass Pen. It’s a beautiful writing tool and a unique work of art at the same time. A glass pen has a tip with spiraling grooves that act as reservoirs. Dip the tip in ink to fill the grooves. As you write, ink travels down the grooves to the tip of the pen. When the tip feels like it’s running dry, turn the pen in your hand to allow ink from another groove to flow to the tip. Glass nibs will never rust, so they can last a lifetime as long as they’re cleaned of ink residue. Be sure to store them in a stable area like a pen cup or tray, too: after all, they’re made of glass, and can break if dropped!

If the designs offered by Rohrer & Klingner don’t strike your fancy, browse the different glass pen colors offered by J. Herbin or Guridrops.

The best calligraphy pen for lettering combines the Brause 361 Steno Blue Pumpkin Nib with a Tachikawa Model 25 Nib Holder. To create letters with line variation—such as those found in modern calligraphy or Spencerian script—you’ll need a calligraphy pen that can flex, and a pointed pen fits the bill. The Brause 361 Steno Blue Pumpkin is capable of thin lines and has an amazing amount of flex.

The Tachikawa Model 25 is a no-nonsense holder that does its job perfectly. Its double rubber rings can hold a wide variety of nibs. The Model 36 and Model 40 are upgraded versions with comfortable rubber grips. Calligraphers who want to achieve the line slant found in Copperplate and other scripts should consider the Speedball Oblique Nib Holder.

The Pilot Parallel is the best calligraphy pen for broad edge calligraphy scripts like italic or blackletter. This unique calligraphy pen features a nib made of two metal plates stacked on top of each other. This allows the ink to flow between the plates and along the entire width of the nib for a juicy and consistent line. Its cartridge-filled design makes the Parallel particularly easy and convenient to use, and its mixable ink allows for fun gradation effects. This pen comes in six nib sizes for projects of all sizes.

Copic Multiliners are some of the best waterproof pens for art. Their archival-safe, pigment-based inks dry very quickly. We were able to paint over them with watercolors immediately and saw no bleeding whatsoever. And since Multiliners are made by Copic, they’re compatible with alcohol-based Copic Markers.

These fineliners have precise needlepoint-tips and come in sizes ranging from delicate 0.03 mm to bold 1.0 mm for every kind of line. They’re also available in ten colors, so you can line your artwork in a different color for visual appeal.

Artists who do a great deal of inking should consider the Multiliner SP. They require a higher up-front investment than their disposable siblings, but they’re refillable and even have replaceable tips.

The best technical drawing pen for art is the Ohto Graphic Liner. Unlike traditional drawing pens with metal tips that must be held vertically, the Graphic Liner has a rollerball tip that can be used at your natural drawing angle. Since it’s made of metal rather than felt or plastic, the tip creates consistent lines without fraying or flexing. This makes it especially suitable for beginners, but even experienced artists can appreciate its natural feel and waterproof, Copic-proof, and archival pigment-based ink.

The best manga pen for art combines a Nikko G Nib with a nib holder like the Tachikawa Model 40. A G Nib has a sharp tip that creates both broad and thin lines ideal for facial features, action-packed scenes, and more. We recommend that beginners start with the Nikko G because it’s relatively firm compared to other G nibs. This firmness makes it easy to control while still allowing a satisfying amount of flex.

For consistent lines, try Nikko’s Maru Nibs. Also known as mapping nibs, these stiff nibs don’t flex at all. They work well for precise details.

Comic pen nibs can’t be used on their own and must be paired with nib holders. The Tachikawa Model 40 is our favorite nib holder for manga artists.

The Pentel Pocket is an incredible brush pen for art. Its responsive bristle tip can make wonderfully expressive lines in the hands of an experienced artist. It delivers thick strokes and fine details with subtle changes in pressure, and can even produce beautiful brush effects. Its rich ink—available in black, gray, and sepia—is waterproof, Copic-proof, and lightfast. This brush pen can be refilled with cartridges.

If you find the Pentel Pocket too hard to control, consider trying out the Zebra Disposable so you can get familiar with brush pens. It has a felt tip that produces surprisingly dramatic lines despite its firmness. As an added bonus, it comes in three tip sizes. We highly recommend it as a beginner brush pen for artists.

As its name suggests, the Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen is a great marker for art. It combines the permanence and vibrancy of India ink with the convenience of a marker. Other inks can fade when exposed to light, but the PITT Artist Pen uses ink that’s lightfast so you can confidently display your art. Because some colors are more lightfast than others, Faber-Castell prints a rating on each pen’s barrel to help you choose the right hues. A one-asterisk rating means the ink is lightfast for at least five years, while a three-asterisk rating is lightfast for more than 100 years!

Faber-Castell offers PITT Pens in marker and brush pen forms. And no matter which pen you prefer, it’s color-matched with other Faber-Castell products like Polychromos Colored Pencils and Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils for consistency in your multimedia projects.

The Royal Talens Ecoline is the best watercolor brush pen for art. Its soft felt tip puts down swaths of bright, juicy color with each stroke. This softness means that it takes some practice to learn how to control the Ecoline, but it makes such wonderful lines that it’s worth it for this excellent watercolor brush pen. The Ecoline contains highly water-soluble ink that blends easily and can continue to be layered and blended after it dries. We recommend pairing the Ecoline with thick watercolor paper because heavy applications of ink can bleed through thinner papers.

The Uni Posca is consistently one of the most popular paint pens at JetPens, and for good reason. Its opaque, water-based ink writes on a wide variety of porous and nonporous surfaces, including paper, plastic, wood, and metal. This marker has intense color payoff and is easy to remove from nonporous surfaces like glass, which makes it great for window signs. It comes in several different tip sizes from extra fine to broad, and there’s even a brush version for lettering and art.

If you need a vibrant colored pen for drawing and coloring, you’ll want to check out the Stabilo Point 88. This fineliner has a 0.4 mm tip that’s great for creating fine outlines and filling in details with bright, even color. It comes in over fifty hues and shades, and it even works well for journaling and taking color-coded notes. Its water-based ink is specially formulated to resist drying out when left uncapped, so it won’t dry out while you’re thinking about what to do next. Make sure you cap your pens for extended breaks, though—it’s the best way to make sure your writing instruments last as long as possible.

If you want to fill in big areas with color quickly, try the Stabilo Pen 68, which has a bold bullet tip. A brush pen version is also available.