I came across BENU pens quite accidentally while scrolling through instagram about two months ago. It was a picture of the Happy Chameleon pen, and I immediately stopped at the picture to find out what brand it was and where I could get my hands on one, because wow it was pretty to look at.
But lets be honest, pretty to look at doesn’t necessarily make it a good pen, unfortunately. So I had to give it a try for myself!
The brand website is a little sparse, but that’s ok because it means we can get right down to business in choosing the type of pen we like best. Now, initially I was set on purchasing one of the Chameleon pens, because yea, their gorgeous. BUT, being the awesome person that I am, I decided I should look at the other collections they had on hand in order to really give each pen a fair shot. Which is how I ended up in the Briolette Collection. It was on the lower price range for their pen types, so YAY! And I’ll be honest that was a motivating factor in my purchase, because like my parents always said, just to be annoying “Money doesn’t grow on trees” although that’s misleading because I think its made of cotton, so…technically not a tree, but still from the ground.
Ok, enough talking. How does the pen work?!
Really nicely! I used cream Tomoe River paper for the above with some Organics Studio Elements Nitrogen Royal Blue. You can really see the red tint, which is super cool.
The pen itself is very light weight, and I mean VERY light weight. The Twsbi Mini Vac (if you’ve got one) is heavier than this pen, and the medium nib, which was my choice, is smaller in height but slightly wider than the Twsbi nib. And even with all it’s body texture and angles, it still feels nice in the hand while writing. It also doesn’t roll when you put it down, which is a plus.
The nib is extremely smooth to write with, no ink flow problems, no false starts but nothing otherwise special about it. Just generally really nice. The only thing that many others might not like, is that I would not recommend posting the pen. I mean you could, but I feel like it would scratch the body of the pen over time, but seeing as I’m never going to post it myself, I don’t really know if it will or not.
All things considered I’m really happy I purchased it. Although I feel like I should disclose that the shipping was $23, which is ASTRONOMICAL! BUT but but, it’s five day shipping straight from Russia, because the brand website is really your only option for purchase. The only other online store I saw that carried it in the U.S. was Vanness, and everything was sold out. So while normally if I saw shipping costs that high, I would have walked away, the pen was too pretty to pass up and honestly, worth it for me.
I consider this pen a collectors item.
Thank you for reading!
The Pentastic 