Sharpie Stainless Steel Pen Review

Above, Below: I had a fun time drawing this WWI-vintage Coastal Motor Boat with the Sharpie Stainless Steel Pen.

(This review was sponsored by no one, and I purchased the pen with my own cash money.)

Sharpie has really upped their game in recent years by introducing line after line of new pens. The latest I tested is the Sharpie Stainless Steel Pen.

This is a refillable, fine-point synthetic nib pen. The pen costs around $5 USD, and refills cost around $2. I really like all the other Sharpie fine-point pens I’ve purchased, and I appreciate the trend of using stainless steel to fit out writing implements, so I had to try this one out.

Of all the stainless steel pens and pencils I own, the Sharpie Stainless is probably my favorite—the finish on the body is extremely smooth and the pen has a good weight to it. The rubber grip is a great contrast to the look and feel of the body, and you get the coarse handling properties of stainless combined with the comfortable high-friction grip when the pen is in use.

As I drew with this pen (in the great Maruman Mnemosyne Notebook), I started to wish I had a full set in different line widths, similar to the technical drawing pens you see sold as sets in the store (Sakura, Staedtler, Ohto, Copic, etc.). You can purchase this pen in a thicker-tipped marker style, but I like how these feel so much that I think a technical pen set would be in a class of its own. I wonder why Sharpie hasn’t made that yet.

The cap posts extremely well, if you like sticking your caps on the back of your pens.

The only complaint I have is that the clip is so tight I wasn’t able to put it in a shirt pocket comfortably. I only do this a couple times a week, but I’m thinking I’ll have to flex the clip point with a pocket knife or something to loosen it up.

I prefer the Sharpie for short-form note-taking when I know I’ll be drawing accompanying boxes, stars, etc. The line is so uniform that this pen is very adept at technical sketching and note-taking. For long-form writing, there are about a million pens that write more smoothly, so don’t buy this one as a writing pen unless you, like I do, often find yourself needing to write and draw on the same paper.