Pros:<p>1. The erasability is excellent. It's just as good as everybody says. If you're old enough to remember "erasable pens" from the 1980s, this is <i>completely</i> different.<p>2. Pretty good feel. Not quite as smooth as a gel pen, but it's like a nice ballpoint.<p>3. If you get the Japanese models from Jetpens you can get some really really fine tips, like 0.38mm<p>4. Great for lefties, little to no smearing. One of the best lefty-friendly pens I've ever tried.<p>5. I find I write/sketch more freely with these relative to regular pens, because I'm not scared of mistakes.<p>Con:<p>1. They seem to dry up <i>really</i> quickly. A few months sitting in my desk drawer, and they lose their ability to write despite being nearly full of ink. I stopped buying them for this reason.<p>Anybody else experienced this? Now that I'm thinking about it, I probably could have experimented more. Maybe the ball was clogged, and cleaning it with rubbing alcohol could have revived them?
What's funny about this is that I've gone in completely the opposite direction. I use fountain pens, with at least one inked up with archival permanent ink. Won't fade, highly water resistant, tamper resistant (changes color when bleached, but won't come off... etc.).<p>Then again, I write work notes, journals, and fiction that I need to last through coffee spills or accidentally setting the notebook on the heater (which could easily be the bottom of my laptop when it's driving high-res monitors.
I use them regularly being in Japan. I must be having a stack of at least fifty pens + refills. They are fairly cheap (~$2) and available everywhere. I made a lot of engineering notes with these pens.<p>One observation not mentioned in these discussions is that the ink tends to fade quite a bit over time. Its not just the heat. My rooms are temperature-controlled. But notes from a year ago for e.g are lighter & several alphabets show part erasure. Give or take a few years, they fade away almost completely. Personal observation but restricted to using the fine tips (0.38 & 0.4). Not sure if same problem happens in 0.5 & 0.7 too.<p>Japan government entities do not recommend using this pen when filling out any form or making any signature. The person in counter quickly tests the ink every time a form gets submitted.
That's the pen I always used at exams at university! Maybe at bit risky, but never had any issues (and being able to fix things without using that white thingy to erase was wonderful).<p>When a friend discovered them he used it to do a puzzle (for a home scape room). It was a crossword than when solved it said something like "heat this", and when you did it, the black squares disappeared revealing the code. The squares were made with that ink.
They are fun / nice-colors to use, but be aware that your writing can disappear over time.<p>A friend has journals a few years old and on the right 2/3rds of the pages the writing is nearly gone (theory being maybe that side got warmer, but not certain)
If you haven't tried them, the erasure is so complete that there's no trace of the previous writing - no ugly smudge on the paper, and they rarely if ever mess up the paper surface (at least in the Leuchterm or Moleskine notebooks that I prefer).<p>One of those things I'd have ignored for ever if I hadn't been shown them by a fellow student on a language class. I'm a complete convert to these now.<p>I particularly love them for scribbling ad-hoc diagrams in my notes and then being able to move things around without redrawing everything from scratch.
I received a set of these pens (the retractable colored ones) when starting my first job out of college. I was teaching high school students. Unlike the early generations of erasable pens, these really do leave no trace on the page when erased. As a new teacher, it was excellent for grading -- students couldn't tell when I inevitably mismarked an assignment. Better still, the ink is heavy and dark, so my students couldn't tell that their assignments were graded with erasable ink. I can't recommend them highly enough as a hybrid between pencils and pens.
I don't use FriXion pens but I did discover JetPens a couple of years ago and have absolutely fallen in love with high end Japanese-market gel pens. Pilot and Uni make so many amazing pens that don't get sold in the US - especially if you like ultrafine tips.
I was signing a rental contract a few years ago and pulled out my own pen. The landlord stopped me and said: "..Is that an erasable pen?"<p>It was one of these Frixion pens. Didn't even realize what I was doing. It was funny in a slightly embarrassing kind of way.
I found my absolute favorite way to write is to use a Rocketbook which is explicitly designed to be used with FriXion pens and then OCR everything. It's really helped me record and then search any ideas or notes I have during the day.
I've always wondered if anyone would combine similar technology with inkjet printers, allowing you to print something out, and then reuse the paper when you were done with it and wanted to print something new.
A handful of my professors don't allow us to use this kind of pens, especially for major examinations. The issue was the ink disappears when exposed to heat. Yes, you could place the paper in a fridge when that happens but what kind of professor will have time to do that? Other times, some erasures unintentionally appears just by placing the paper near an A/C.<p>I never use these pens anymore because of it's weird use case: writings which doesn't need to be kept long-term and at the same time you're sure will be handled properly (temperature-wise).
These are my favorite pens I've ever used. Why?<p>- The eraser literally never runs out. I've had 1 of them for years and gone through 5+ ink refills<p>- They actually erase well with very minimal smearing unlike the old "erasable" pens of the 2000's<p>- Writing in ink while having the erasability of a pencil is great<p>- The ink does disappear in high heat, but I have never lost anything important. I can almost always get it back using the freezer method<p>Highly recommend!
<i>because of its heat-reacting properties, the ink may disappear if left out in a hot car or by a heater (the official temperature at which it “erases” is 60°C/140°F)</i><p>Oh man. "I used these pens a lot and now several years of notebooks are empty because there was a heat wave" is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Jetpens is where I first bought a Lamy Safari 10 years ago, and it still works perfectly.<p>Highly recommend Jetpens for pens, ink, paper and more (and the Lamy is a great first fountain pen).
They're nice pens - I personally prefer the G2 gel pens - but I can't help but think of this XKCD:<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1095/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1095/</a><p>Human subcultures are nested fractally, there's no bottom.
> Conversely, the ink can reappear when temperatures reach below -10°C/14°F.<p>Neat. Disappearing, reappearing ink -- like the McGuffin in <i>Who Framed Roger Rabbit</i>.
So how does this work if you live in a hot part of the world, and say, you leave your notebook in your car for the day.... does all your work simply vanish?