Zebra Airfit Jell Gel Ink Pen with Push Grip – 0.5 mm – Yellow Orange Body

I was in rather dire need of a nap when I drew this up; can you tell?

In my never-ending quest for the pen pinnacle of grip-based comfort and opulence, I stumbled upon the Zebra Airfit Jell.

Opulence is comprised of 49% pearlescent sheen

Design: love it. End of story. It’s fun, it’s color-coordinated, it includes bits that are transparent, translucent, opaque, and also shimmery and shiny. It has metal, it has plastic. I don’t know what else you could ask for it to have. Silk? Titanium? Wood? Come on, people, this pen is only $5. There’s only so much you can buy with $5. Speaking of price, every time I pick up this pen, I marvel to myself, “this thing really feels like you’re getting your money’s worth. THIS IS WHAT FIVE DOLLARS SHOULD GET YOU IN A PEN.” But no one around ever cares, so I keep that kind of thinking to myself.

Smooth like butter. Yellow like butter. Goes well with toast, popcorn, and deep-fryers at a state fair like butter.

The clip is an even better version of the one found the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip, which I already thought was the cat’s meowing at the bee’s knees. This clip style is tied with the Lamy Vista/Safari/Al-Star style of clip at #1 for what I think a pen clip should be.

This is probably not very stable.

If the clip can’t clip onto a pocket or lanyard without giving me the apprehension that I might, at the slightest sneeze, break it, then you might as well not put a clip on there. This clip is a clip’s clip. It can clip onto clips clipping onto other clips. The metal hinge is sturdy. And, in an improvement over the Push Clip, there is a little window-hole at the top of the clip, which I’ve finally figured out is for those ubiquitous (in Japan at least) cell phone charms to attach to your pen. Granted, this 1″ figurine of Hello Kitty dressed as an aardvark/rabbit/donkey on a surfboard is not the best thing to happen to the balance of this pen, but if you’re so inclined as to loop accouterments onto your pens, then your day has come.

Note: the cone around the tip is actually metal, not just plastic painted to look like metal. It's the little things that show a pen company really cares.

Let’s talk about grips. Since temperatures in my area have dropped recently, I can’t speak to the alleged cooling properties of the grip’s hollow air chambers, but I can attest to the rest of the grip. It’s long enough to accommodate  the way I normally hold a pen; the grip touches both the resting point on my third finger and the upper inside of my thumb, toward the hollow. These are two high-stress places in my hand, especially when I am writing quickly and forget that maintaining an unwavering death grip on the pen isn’t necessary. Of all the deluxe grips I’ve tried so far, the Airfit is easily the most firm. Compare:

The ungripped grip

not being held, to:

Gripped in the grips of gripping

holding the grip as if to write. Hardly any distortion. I think it’s largely a function of the air chamber supports. If you like a grip with the consistency of Silly Putty, then this is not the grip for you. It still has a bit of springiness to it, but like I said, it’s the firmest grip I know.

The only negative point: the Airfit grip does have the nice-grip tendency to magnetically attract microscopic debris, but not to a point that I find bothersome.

Too much holding and typing sweet nothings, not enough writing and typing sweet nothings.

How does it write? As well as any Zebra Sarasa of 0.5mm line width, which is to say, quite well. Smooth, consistent, no blobs, no skips. The gold standard of how a gel pen should write.

Gold standard remarkably not-so-very-gold colored...except for the deceptively lit parts

But if bright blue or 0.5mm doesn’t do it for you, just swap in any Sarasa refill. They all fit, so far as I’ve tried.

I dream of a day when I will see this logo on this pen in typical American office-supply stores.

The Zebra Airfit Jell is an awesome, inexpensive gel pen with a wide range of available refills. It also comes in several other inoffensively pastel accent colors, if yellow orange is the worst color in your visible spectrum. An especially awesome step up for fans of the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip.
Zebra Airfit Jell Gel Ink Pen with Push Grip – 0.5 mm – Yellow Orange Body at JetPens