Stainless Steel Sharpie Review

Sharpies are a wonderful thing. Permanent ink (great for labeling your clothes in the dorm environment), wonderful design (the gray, the black, the recognizable shoulder of the tip, the integrated clip), the smell, the 'pop' sound when opening and 'click' when closing - all of these make for a unique and dare I say 'American' experience. Sanford truly hit a home run with the design and utility of this item. I keep it around for writing on CDs, for construction work, for touching up black shoes and my camera, the list can go on and on.

Well, Sanford took a classic and made it even better. Of course, there have been other Sharpie newnesses - various Sharpie pens, mini-Sharpies, double-headed Sharpies, Sharpie highlighters, and more - but this one is a particularly nice and eye-catching evolution.

We speak of course of the Stainless Steel Sharpie:

The body of this SS Sharpie, is all stainless steel. It feels very tough in the hand, and would provide a good hard poke to someone if it happened to be the only self-defense implement you had with you. The cap pops down with a reassuring 'click,' too. The 'Sharpie' logo is laser-etched on, so no paint to wear off. The finish has held up well despite banging about in my pencil case for a couple months now.

The Sharpie's writing bit is as far as I can tell, the same as the original, so probably not much need to discuss much here. Just be careful about bleed on thinner papers (probably cardstock is the way to go if bleed is a big concern), and enjoy the thick, dark line it lays down.

The neat thing about this Sharpie that is worthy of mention, is that it is refillable. The black thing you see in the picture above, is the refill. Assuming the whole barrel is filled with ink, it's got a considerable reservoir, and when its done, you can hang on to the stainless steel shell and pop in a new refill. This is especially nice since the felt tip usually degrades after a while, and then you'll get a new, sharp tip, while still retaining your old barrel. The refill screws in via square threads (nice touch), and additionally, the threading on the receiving end of the barrel is, of course, stainless steel - so they'll last pretty much forever without getting cross-threaded, etc., since the threads on the refill are plastic (much softer).

So, this is a definitely good buy, and nice upgrade on the original Sharpie - especially if you need one that will hold up to greater use and abuse. It's a little thicker than the original Sharpie but not obtrusively so. I bought mine at Walmart for a little over $5, much cheaper than at the big box stationery stores.

Btw, for ideas on how to use it, head on over to the neat Sharpie blog. Cool ideas there.