Some of you may recall my love of Jetpens.com and all the wonderful pens I’ve gotten from them. How I coped before my beloved sepia Tachikawa fountain pen, or my Zebra G nibs I do not recall. I’m still on my very first of the nibs, by the way, and it’s lasted me close to a year at this point!
In any case, Jetpens has sent me a random pen to review. A highlighter, to be specific. I was surprised to see it, as I don’t believe I’ve used a highlighter in more than five years, and the ones I recall were pretty terrible. I always got those Avery brand Hi-Liters, with the horrible and easily frayed felt tips that dropped giant puddles of ink on everything they touched.
The highlighter they sent, the Monami Essenti, was probably as much of a contrast to the the Hi-Liter as probably exists in the highlighter world. It’s slim, for one, with a very pleasing pen-like profile and a hard chisel tip. Very hard, in fact, for being the “soft” version.
The ink comes out smoothly, with only an initial pooling when the nib first hits the page. The nib being a lot harder and narrower than I’m used to (the effective width is just barely wider than the lines of text I was testing it on) it took some practice for me to get a straight, consistent line.
As with any pen, the final test is whether it bleeds through common substrates. The initial little dollop of ink soaked through just a little on medium-weight printer paper, but the rest of the line didn’t. I don’t have anything bible-weight to practice on, but in my estimation it would likely soak through such thin paper.
Conclusion: It’s a nice, lightweight highlighter with a lovely pale blue color and a firm nib. Would be ideal for books and copied pages, but would likely bleed through anything super thin.
Bonus feature: Instead of a standard pocket clip, the Essenti has a nice little spring-loaded clip.
A Distinguished Bird 