Ti Arto – The Ultimate Refill Friendly Pen
In general I’ve become kind of cynical and tired of Kickstarter pens. Lately most are just some fancy but nicely designed metal that look nice but offer no real innovation. Then I saw the Ti ARTO (back it on Kickstarter here) by BIG IDEA DESIGN. My cynicism stopped dead in its tracks and within a few seconds I decided to back the project myself. The Ti ARTO not only looks amazing, but it also does something that no other pen does to this magnitude. I actually snagged the second to last early bird backer saving me $6 which was nice. Like I said, this is no ordinary Kickstarter project, so lets take a look at what makes it so awesome!
Obviously the visual on the Ti ARTO is fantastic. Its sleek, elegant, and made of some very precisely machined titanium. We also know that the folks (Chadwick and Joe) from Big Idea Design are masters of design, pens, and Kickstarter projects, but none of that is what pushes the Ti ARTO over the edge for me. The huge selling point for me is that it takes over 200 different refills due to its very innovative design. See, I told you most Kickstarter pens lack any innovation! Just looking at this pen I can see that Chadwick and Joe nailed it and came up with something amazing. The unique design here lets you customize it to handle all different sizes of refills without any tip rattle or annoying spacers.
How did they do it? Well above is a close up of the tip and grip section on the Ti ARTO pen. The spot where you see the tip poking through is an adjustable hole that you twist to tighten around the refill itself. It looks very similar to how a replaceable drill bit works on many drills.
If you aren’t familiar with how a drill bit works, the above animation will be of help. This refill feature to me is well worth the price of entry. It solves the puzzle of taking so many refills, and also looks like it completely eliminates any tip rattle which is one of the most annoying writing related issues of mine. I’m really excited to get my hands on the Ti ARTO pen for a full review and to use for my daily writing. I still really enjoy using my first Titanium pen from Big Idea Designs which *only* takes 30 refills, not 200!
I think my top refill options to try are going to be the Pilot Precise V5 RT, Uniball Signo UM-151, and Uniball Jetstream, (all via Amazon) but I’m sure I’ll be trying just about every refill I can get my hands on. Check this thing out over on the Kickstarter page to get all of the details though. Knowing the quality of their work, and seeing the unique design, I expect it will the best pen to come out of Kickstarter. I can’t imagine a scenario where this doesn’t become a permanent part of my EDC arsenal. This is saying a ton since I probably have well over 1000 pens in my stash.
SOURCE:http://officesupplygeek.com/pen-review/ti-arto-ultimate-refill-friendly-pen/