Between the name and the design of the pen, the uni-ball Air makes me feel like I’m writing with a Blackbird stealth jet. It’s a black, all-plastic rollerball pen with a faint hexagonal pattern on the barrel and a grey swoosh near the tip. It looks really cool.
The Air has a very interesting feel while writing. It’s somewhat waxy on paper and is almost like writing with a crayon. The ink is very rich and dark, and it spreads out on the page so much that it feels much thicker than a 0.7mm tip. Though it doesn’t smear nearly as much as I expected, it does seem to bleed readily through paper.
One of the main advertising points of the Air is that it writes at any angle, and I think it actually produces a finer, cleaner line when writing upside down. If uni-ball offered the AIr in a smaller tip size, I’d probably jump to recommend it. At 0.7mm, however, it runs and bleeds enough that I’m inclined to pass it up.
Extra Links
- Review at Inkdependence. He also noted that it bleeds heavily though paper. There’s also a video review if you’d like to see how the ink holds up to water.
- Review at Comfortable Shoes Studio. Again, it’s pointed out here how much ink comes out of this pen. And, unlike me, she thinks the pen is ugly.
- Review at The Clicky Post with a lot more pictures.
Pens and Junk 
THIS pen is in my permanent rotation!! It is a joy to write with!!
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If it didn’t flow so heavy I think I’d like it a lot too, but I often use both sides of my notebook pages, so bleed-through ends up being a bigger deal for me.
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You’re right about the flow. I prefer wet ink, so I’m a bit partial to pens like the air. It’s great for crafting, too. Works well on cardstock and butcher paper.
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I’m finding the Uni-ball AIR doesn’t last very long; not like the old pens used to. Its not that I’m writing any more than I usually do – these pens last only about 6 weeks and there is no means of checking how much ink is in the pen to start with and how much remains. Is that a marketing ploy, I wonder. In this day and age of environmental conservation, I would rather use a commodity from a company that cares about the environment than their profit margins. You have a great product but please give us value for money and put the environment first. Thank you.
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Yeah, they are very wet pens – by that I mean, they leave a lot of ink on the page. You can get a nice, dark heavy line, but the ink will run out a lot faster.
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