I have such a soft spot for multi-pens. I decided to try a dedicated Pilot Frixion 3-Colors Slim in pearl green ($9) with three different color options and came with 0.38 tip size (which is my favorite gel pen tip size).
The Frixion 3-Colors Slim came with the standard red, blue and black erasable gel refills. Being spoiled by the endless variations in color in fountain pen ink, I get really pouty if I have to use “boring, standard” colors in any writing tool. So, I was delighted that many alternate color refills were available for the Frixion multi-pen (individual refills start at $2.30).
I tested the Frixion pen and inks on two paper types: a standard big box store composition notebook and my fancier Tomoe River as well.
I’m really happy with upgraded ink colors though it did make the multi-pen exponentially more expensive than using the stock inks. I did not find a Frixion multi-pen option that came empty though so if you are hoping to upgrade the ink colors in the Frixion multi-pen the final price will come in at about $15USD. While the refills might fit into a different multi-pen body, the “frixion”-specific multi-pen bodies are the only ones that include the built-in eraser. It is possible to get a stand alone Frixion eraser ($1.65) if you want to mix it up.
On the very porous composition book paper, the Frixion eraser erased adequately. It was a lot of ink converage and probably not the same as erasing a couple words of text so, depending on your paper YMMV.
Next up is the Tomoe River paper. Overall, the Frixion multi-pen performed similar but there was a noticeably longer dry time for the ink on Tomoe River.
The color and line weights all looked similar on the TR paper and the ink erased quite easily. I would even say that it erased better and more completely than on the composition book.
Overall, the Frixion multi-pen is a lot of fun and the erasability is a really great feature that I always forget how delightful it is to be able to erase ink.
Other sizes and configurations are also available with 2- to 4-color components. See the full collection here.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
