Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #3: Pentel Tradio Fountain Pen in Pearl Black Finish (Entries closed and winner announced)

Welcome to day 3 of Booker-Palooza 2012. This is the third givewaway of the week, with two more to follow, so make sure you check back daily.

Please note that because I screwed up the timing of this post and it published late, I will keep entries open for an additional 24 hours, until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, September 7.

You're probably wondering how I decided to give away this this Pentel Tradio Fountain Pen after spending 28 bucks on it a year or so ago. The clue is in the last part of that sentence. I purchased this at least a year ago, tried it out for a day to write the review, then put it away and never got around to writing the review. Something tells me there are not legions of Tradio fans scouring eBay for a deal on this pen, so I figured, what the heck . . . give it away! So, here we go.

The Review

The Tradio is comparable in size to a Lamy Safari (though here, I have it pictured next to a Lamy AL-Star,) at least in length. But it tapers more at the ends and is thus less cylindrical. It feels uch smaller than the Safari, though, perhaps partly because of its shape and partly because it's virtually weightless. When you're writing unposted, there's no heft to the pen at all. Some people will like that, some won't.

While I'm comparing it to the Safari in size, I might as well make the comparison in a few other ways, especially since they are similarly priced (in fact, at Jet Pens, the Tradio and Safari are both priced at $26.00) and both could be considered "entry level" pens.

Top: Lamy AL-Star, bottom: Pentel Tradio

The finish on the Tradio is a little fancier, probably designed to give the illusion that the pen has a gunmetal body instead of a plastic one. It looks more purple in the photos than it does right in front of you. (The picture of the cap captures the finish better.) But if you like shiny, metal-looking plastic, the black pearl Tradio is for you. The other Tradio finishes look, online at least, like they would be more obviously plastic. So, in the fancy-shmancy category, score a point for the Tradio.

The Tradio doesn't feel very durable, but I have to admit I never really put put it to the test. Perhaps it is because the pen is so light, but I just would not have the same confidence shoving this pen into my jeans pocket as I would carrying a Safari that way. It feels more breakable to me, but I have no scientific evidence to back that up.

The wire Safari/AL-Star clip is very distinctive, and I've read a lot of negative comments about how ugly it is, but I happen to like it in both form and function, and I do not like the Tradio's clip as much. The cap and clip on the Tradio are part of he same molded piece of plastic; there is no spring for the clip except for whatever physical properties the molded plastic has. While not quite as guaranteed to go over your pocket every time, the Tradio clip is nonetheless pretty consistent. But I have to give the nod to the Safari in this one.

One-piece clip and cap; view window near top

The Tradio cap, like that on the Safari, clicks on rather than screws on, and has one feature that I consider somewhat gimmicky: a window in the cap that lets you see the nib while the pen is capped. I'm not sure what function that serves, though I suppose it's possible you might have a Tradio rollerball in the same color and want to be able to tell the difference. If you're going to put a viewing window in a fountain pen, better to have it so you can view the ink level, like on the Safari.

The nib on the Tradio writes incredibly smooth for a pen at this price point. Really, really , nice. I actually like the feel of this nib much better than any on my Safaris.And it has an aesthetic leg up on the Safari nib as well, with some design on the nib and, according to Jet Pens at least, some gold plating. Unfortunately, the design of the nib was usually obscured by ink; this nib displayed lots of nib creep when inked with Noodler's Navy, but I didn't try other inks and for all I know, that same ink would creep on a Safari. But the Safari has something else going for it: the nib is easily changed, and relatively inexpensive replacement nibs (around $10 each, I think) make it economical to experiment with different nib widths, including three widths of italic nibs.

Overall, the Tradio is a solid entry-level pen or daily writer for those accustomed to fountain pens. It's a viable alternative to a Lamy Safari if you happen to like the design silhouette or finish better, want a fancier nib, want a smoother writing experience (though your mileage may vary on this consideration), or, like a lot of people, are turned off by the Safari clip.

I got my Tradio through Writer's Bloc; they still carry the pen in a few other finishes, but not black pearl.  You can find the black pearl finish and several others at JetPens. I've ordered a lot more over the years from JetPens than I have Writer's Bloc, but they are both reliable vendors in my experience.

The Giveaway

 If you'd like this pen, here's how to enter the giveaway.

Please note that because I screwed up the timing of this post and it published late, I will keep entries open for an additional 24 hours, until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, September 6. 

You can enter by email, by commenting, or by both. It's perfectly OK for you to enter both ways. Not everyone is necessarily going to take the time to do that (very few did on the first giveaway), so entering both ways may increase your chances of winning.

To enter by email, send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:

TRADIO

 
Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday morning, September 7. You may send only one email per person.

To enter by commenting, click in the comment field, then use one of the login methods displayed or click in the NAME field to comment as a guest. Please note that if you log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, I will not have your email and will not be able to contact you directly if you win. In that case, you'll have to return to this post to see if you are the announced winner and claim your prize. (If you are concerned about privacy, note that your email will not display in the comment.) Your comment must be timestamped no later than 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Friday, September 7.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 4 in Booker-Palooza 2012. Remember,  each of the giveaway posts this week goes up at 12:01 a.m. and the sign up period on each is only 24 hours, so you'll have to check back every day to make sure you don't miss your chance at something interesting.

UPDATE: 29 emails and 19 comments equals 48 total entries. And the winner is . . . drum roll please . . . [CYMBAL CRASH] . . .

Kyle, the third email entry received. Congratulations, Kyle!

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #3: Pentel Tradio Fountain Pen in Pearl Black Finish (Entries closed and winner announced)

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #1: Levenger Wired Notebook-White Full Page Ruled (Closed to new entries)

Welcome, everyone, to the inaugural post of Booker-Palooza 2012!

Today's giveaway is the Levenger Wired Notebook-White Full Page Ruled. Usually, I link the name of the product to someplace you can buy it, but I don't see this product on the Levenger website anymore. I don't know if that situation is temporary or not, but I'm surprised to see it gone. I've been buying these for a while and usually saw them whenever I was just browsing and drooling the Levenger website. (While I'm mentioning the Levenger website, I should mention that the Labor Day Sale they have going is fantastic, and it goes through September 5. And, full disclosure: Levenger has provided products me free products (but not this one) to review.)

Anyway, on to the review.

The Review

I've had one of these notebooks opened on my desk at work for probably eight months out of the last year, using them mostly to keep my timesheets, but also using them occasionally to take research notes or to make notes for upcoming oral arguments. While it has its faults, I like it well enough to have bought seven of them when they were on sale.

It sits open at my right hand, so I can immediately jot down the tasks and time spent on my client matters, making for very accurate time reporting and detailed, accurate bills for my clients. There's nothing about the notebook itself that really improves my timekeeping, exactly, unless you count the fact that I enjoy writing in it so much. Maybe, on some subliminal level, that makes me more likely to record my time promptly. good not only for my clients, but for me, too, as billable time does not escape billing.


The reason I like writing in it is the feel of the paper. I love, love, love, heavyweight paper. Not so much for the writing, but for the handling. Once these sheets are removed from the notebook, they are a joy to shuffle, sort, or arrange. Since the paper is white, the weight of the paper (and slightly narrow dimension, as discussed below) helps my pages of handwritten notes stand out in a stack of other white papers.

The writing experience is quite nice, too. Most pens, except those with tips of less than 5 mm, tend to write very smoothly.

Levenger claims the paper is fountain pen friendly, and that was my initial impression of the paper. In my post last December year about the great variance in paper quality among various Levenger products, I wrote about this particular notebook:

This one is a standout. The white paper has great weight, smooth feel, great performance. No bleed through even with heavily saturated inks delivered through juicy nibs. This is awesome paper.

Unfortunately, that initial impression has not held up. I use a different pen and ink color virtually every day on my timesheets, sometimes with a few changes during the course of the day, so I've tried lots of different combinations on this paper. It's definitely hit-or-miss when it comes to handling fountain pen ink, at least with respect to how usable the opposite side of the papers is going to be. There's very little or even no feathering with most inks, but show through and bleed through vary significantly and are very unpredictable.  Some saturated inks barely show through and make it easy to write on both sides of the paper, while some less saturated inks through the same pen bleed through like crazy. The particular notebook I chose to test for this post seems especially susceptible to bleeding.

I've really got to learn how to take a properly exposed photograph. Sorry about that.

You also need to choose your other pens carefully. The Bic permanent marker (felt tip) I tried bled through. (I did not have a sharpie to try out.) Surprisingly, the brown Platinum Preppy (at the very bottom in the photo), despite being one of the broadest and wettest lines, showed through very little compared to the Bic. Finer gel pens did best, but finer points tend to stick a little on this paper and take away the smoothness. Some rollerballs do better than others, even with the same color ink.

None of this particularly bothers me, because I'm not worried about writing on both sides. But if you are, I suggest keeping a few pages at the back of the notebook as test pages to try out pen and ink combinations before using them elsewhere in the notebook.

I prefer the full width ruling on this paper to the annotation ruling found in so many Levenger products. This is especially helpful for my timekeeping, where I don't need to "call out" notes to the margin. Ruling across the entire page gives me plenty of real estate to track my time and to tally it up at the end of the day.

This is billed as a letter-sized (8.5 in. x 11 in.) notebook, but keep in mind that is the dimension of the paper before removing it from the notebook. Once torn out, the paper is a little narrower, approximating the width of an A4 sheet. It's just enough to be another aid in finding one's notes among other white papers in a stack, but not so much to make it difficult to include in a file of letter sized paper. Putting notes in the file is also made easier by the fact that the pages are perforated, so the raggedy edges created from tearing a page out from the binding is easily removed.

While a great desktop companion, this notebook is not very portable. Few letter-sized notebooks are, but this one has a couple of other factors working against portability.

First, this paper is so substantial that the 85 pages make the notebook nearly a half inch thick. That's fine if you carry a full size briefcase. But it can be a bit of a space hog when space counts, such as in a laptop bag or in my Levenger Briefolio, which is all I tend to carry (besides my planner) back and forth to work.

Second, it's not especially durable. I carried one back and forth to work every day (besides the space it took up in briefolio) for about 4 months. It didn't fall apart, but the covers, which are not especially stiff, got beat up a bit. And the wire for the twin ring binding is not especially strong; it eventually started to bend and separate,  so about a third of the back cover started slipping off the wire. That second problem is likely to be even worse if you remove pages as you go, because I think the rings are more vulnerable without a full notebook attached. (One indication regarding the lack of strength in the wire is that several notebooks arrive from Levenger with the end wires bent.)

If this notebook is gone for good, that's a real shame. I much prefer it to the wired notebook with multi-colored paper and annotation ruling, both because I prefer the full page ruling and because the colored paper and fountain pen ink don't really seem to get along, and it doesn't even feel good to write on the colored paper.

For all its faults —principally, the inconsistency of the paper when it comes to different inks, and the features making it unsuitable for portability — I still really like this notebook, at least to keep on my desktop. Enough to have ordered seven of them when they were on sale for $8 (they were normally $12).

The Giveaway

Entries are now closed. The following procedures will no longer work.

If you'd like one, here's how to enter the giveaway. Make sure you read through ALL these instructions, to make sure you are entered and possibly double your chance at winning, before you actually carry out any of the steps.

Send an email to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com, with the following word, and ONLY the following word, in the subject line:

WIRED

Lower case or upper case doesn't matter, as long as your email reaches me by 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, Tuesday morning, September 4. You may send only one email per person, but . . .

if you leave a comment on this post, that comment will count as a second entry as long as your email gives the name you used to comment. I need an email from every entrant because I need to be able to contact the winner, so a comment without a corresponding email will not count as an entry.

Good luck, and check back tomorrow for giveaway number 2 in Booker-Palooza 2012.

UPDATE: Congrats to winner Gerald!

Booker-Palooza 2012 Review and Giveaway #1: Levenger Wired Notebook-White Full Page Ruled (Closed to new entries)