My grandparents bought me a Waterman ballpoint pen 24 years ago and it’s still going strong. Plus it’s a good looking pen.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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The Parker Jotter is a great pen, and Parker-style refills are very common, so finding new ink for it is quite easy.
Is it a gel pen?
https://www.scamstuff.com/collections/rogue-wish-list/products/pen-of-greatness
I have one of these and its pretty great. Red, blue and black ballpoint also with a pacer.
Sturdy construction and lifetime guarantee
I don't think I've ever stopped using a pen because of a fault or end-of-life condition of the pen itself. I stop using them because "Where the actual fuck did I put my pen...?"
What kind of pen are you looking for? Ballpoint pen, fountain pen, ...?
Ballpoint probably
I have a Rotring ballpoint I've had for 25 years, has red black and pencil, and I still useit occasioanly.
i don't write with it much anymore I love writing with a fountain pen (have two Lamy's and a few nibs) but I'm too lazy for all the fiddle fucking about fountain pens need and have settled on gel as the best for me.
In that case, I second the Zebra recommendation from the other posters (G models for gel, F models for ink-based ballpoints). They also make great mechanical pencils (DelGuard and M models). For fountain pens, I would go with Lamy, although I have not owned one in a while.
Don't pretty much all pens just end up getting lost long, long before they get worn out? I've managed to hold onto a few for a few months but eventually they just get stolen by a borrower or the pen gnomes.
The Zebra G-450 is my daily driver. It feels sturdy, the click is satisfying, the ink basically can’t smudge, and it’s inexpensive. The refills are cheap too, and I’ve gone through maybe ten of them (writing lots of stuff in lab notebooks for work).
It doesn’t have that “buy one expensive thing that lasts forever” prestige because it’s not expensive. But I can’t wear this thing out.
Is it a gel pen?
Yep, it uses gel ink.
can you write fast with it, in my experience i am very slow with gel pens
Fast enough for me, I guess. Faster than a ballpoint but not as fast as a rollerball. But a rollerball would turn what I do into an unintelligible smear, so I’m sticking with the gel.
I’ve been using the Zebra F-701 for work for a few years now and it’s suffered getting beaten around a lot and taken it extremely well. It’s a fully metal pen, and you can get metal refills too (which I do). In my line of work, all the plastic pens I’ve used have broken, so in my search for an all-metal pen brought me to the 701 and I love it. I got my wife one too for her at work and she also loves it. Great value for money, too.
saw on reddit that people dont like the ink? is this true?
I can’t speak for random Reddit folks but I’ve never been disappointed in the ink and I’ve gone through lots of refills. It doesn’t write as smoothly as my Parker Jotter (which is my at-home pen of choice when I’m not feeling a fountain pen), but the Jotter is twice the price and the refills aren’t all metal (I’m sure you can probably get metal refills third party but I haven’t tried them myself).
I like Fisher Pens personally. They're not fancy or the "best" but, they're relatively cheap, readily available, and can write in basically any condition, including space lol
probably a good quality steel fountain pen you can refill, something like a LAMY 2000
I really like my Lamy Safari fountain pen. I've only had it for a few years, so I can't exactly speak to the durability of it long term, but it feels solid and works well. I use a standard Lamy cartridge converter to refill it with ink and it works great.
Non fountain pen option? I’m not a fan of
fountain pens are the best for BIFL; if you are serious, finding a fountain pen that works for you and learning to effectively clean, refill, and use it is your best bet
but this person claims they have used a Parker pen that they inherited that was manufactured in the 1970s and which they still make refills for ... refills for a pen like that might be more expensive, and in general ballpoint pens are not going to last as long (and generally over a lifetime you won't find pen companies that continue to manufacture compatible refills), but this might be a backup option if you just won't consider fountain pens
Overall you are correct.
But standard Parker and Cross can refills have been the same for longer than I've been alive. Very easy to get.
One point is that the Parker and Cross type of refills completely replaces the writing head and so by one view it is not really "BIFL" since so much of the unit has to be refreshed (and so not as environmentally friendly) compared to a fountain pen. That being said, for some people the risk of ink all over your hands is not worth or even entirely precludes using a fountain pen, or there may be other circumstances.
For example, at my workplace there is only one approved type of pen that can be used 😢
that's great - I bet there are some decent options out there, I just think those options are more fragile / more likely to disappear in the future or become incompatible with older pens, etc. whereas fountain pens are going to be fairly immune to the coming and going of companies, etc.
that said, I'm very happy to hear Parker pens have had reliable refills for at least a generation and probably for OP's purposes that's a fine pen option (fountain pens do have their downsides)
Yeah, I've had a couple Parker pens since I was a kid. And I still use a beat-up metal Cross pen that was my grandfather's.
When I was still using pens frequently, My good pen was a medium point Pilot Metropolitan and my beater pen was a Zebra F-701. The Zebra was damn near indestructible. The Pilot was pleasant to write with. The Zebra F301s aren't bad either, I just managed to break them frequently.
I hear the new rotring 4 in 1 is pretty good, not as good as the original but it takes d1 refills so you can have a gel refill for smooth writing and a spacepen refill for writing on awkward things.
+1 for Rotring (or rOtring as they stylize it). I use a Rapid Pro ballpoint for my daily use, had it for almost a decade now. Solid steel body, the knurling on the grip is nice, it's a good thickness and weight for most purposes. And it takes a number of cheaply available inserts.
Another +1 for rOtring. I've had a rotring 600 mechanical in 0.7mm for a decade. The lead guide is a bit of a weak point but honestly I dropped it dozens if not hundreds of times and was able to bend it back into alignment for a long time. By the time it quit on me there was a fraction of a millimeter of the guide sticking out. I was able to replace the barrel and it's good as new. Can't speak to the pens but their overall build quality and durability is excellent.
I have had multiple rotring 600 pens and the clicker has a very weak failpoint where if you're not super careful clicking it, the cap of the clicker is dislodged and detaches from the pen