Discord pal(s) have been pushing me to check out a Karas pen for a while now, and I recently snagged the Karas Kustom INK V2 Rollerball in the tumbled silver finish. This is a beast of a pen, and a really solid offering with a few quirks.
Materials, Size & Stuff
The pen itself is an impressively large chunk of aluminum, which has been tumbled for a really nice finish. There’s loads of finish options, as well as other variations you can do. This is paired with a stout pocket clip (it’s designed to be used and carried with the clip) and some very smooth threads which seal the cap on using an o-ring.
When I first opened the pen, I was pretty surprised by just how large the diameter is on it. It’s not the largest pen I have, but it’s anything but small. Even at that, the weight is kept low enough that it’s not at all heavy to carry and use.
For me the pocket clip is the real star here. It’s excellent and one of the best I have seen/used on a pen. It clips securely, and doesn’t at all feel like it is a weak spot. Well done.
The cap also seats very securely, and that’s something of a point of pride Karas takes with this pen, noting that it will stay sealed in your pocket. And it certainly does — no fear there.
In Use & Carry
My primary worry with this pen was the size — it felt like it would be much too big to use comfortably. However, in practice, I found that the grip area thins out nicely and is decently formed to make for a comfortable and secure grip.
That said, the G2/Parker refill setup isn’t my favorite and overall I found that there was no getting around the sheer size of this thing. It’s not that it is bad to write with, it’s that it is bulky to carry in your pocket, bulky in hand, and a little less precise overall.
It does feel incredibly stout in your hand. And the machining on the threads is a delight to use. This is a well made pen.
In fact the biggest downside wasn’t the size of the pen, but that the raw aluminum nature meant that at times my fingers did start to get some black marks on them from the metal itself. This is something I rarely see these days, and made me regret not getting something with a coating/finish to it.
Overall
This doesn’t beat out the Prometheus Alpha for me as a pocket pen, but it does find a place in my primary EDC pouch — as I feel confident in the lid staying secure, leak proof ability, and the ease of finding refills for it.
It’s a good pen, but it has some quirks.
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