Ohto GS02 Ceramic Gel Pen (and more)

 Today I picked up the new Ohto GS02 (GS02-G5-KK).

This seems like quite a year for new pens and refills. Lots of new stuff from Uni, Tombow, and Ohto. The other week I went to my local stationery shop and they had this GS02, which made me curious. I was not a huge fan of the GS01 in terms of design, but it had a really unique click (very mechanical, and you can hear all the metal pieces moving into place) and a decent refill, so I was intrigued about the GS02 because it was much better looking.

I didn't buy it right away, because there was no demo model at the shop to try it out - I went home and did a bit of research, and found that Ohto had introduced a new gel refill for it! It was also in the Parker G2 size (as with their former gel refills), which is very convenient.

I decided I want to try it, and I looked online to see if I could get a better price, but it was sold out everywhere. So I called the shop and told them to put it on hold for me, and I came by to pick it up today.

Really interesting shape - faceted at the bottom, round at the top.

Metal components

New ceramic ball gel refill

GS01 gel pen for comparison

I'm not sure if the pen is metal and coated with something, or if it's entirely constructed of a new material, but it feels and sounds like it's made out of some kind of ceramic.

The colour is quite beautiful (in khaki), and the transition from round to hexagonal is very distinguished. The click mechanism has that same very mechanical feel of the GS01, but it sounds a lot different in this pen body. No complaints about the pen body - it is very very nice.

After soaking in water for 30 minutes

Writing on a cereal box (top row)

As for writing performance of the refill, it's quite good. At first it felt a bit sticky, but I think it was because some remnants of the tip sealant was left on it. After getting going, it was very smooth.

It had a little bit of a tough time writing on only the glossiest of paper (cereal box) compared to some other competitors, but it was the second-fastest drying gel pen (after the InkJoy), is a (very!) permanent ink (unlike the Inkjoy), and is exceptionally smooth for a 0.5mm (I think that's the only size it comes in). All round it's an excellent performer. I'm not typically using needlepoint tips, so I'm not sure if this is usual, but I noticed it writes better on a bit of an angle.

Also during this test I gained some extra respect for the new Tombow refills, which I was already impressed with. I think the ballpoint refill is the truest black colour (at least definitely more-so than the Jetstream, very hard to tell the tone versus the Vicuna so judge by the photos), and both the ballpoint and gel performed very well on the ultra gloss cardboard.

Also, I finally got a refill adapter for my Lamy pens. It's a "BA-LM16" adapter from Japan, which seems to be made out of aluminum. No idea who actually manufactures it - the quality seems high, and basically it allows you to insert something like a D1 refill (but it claims that it can only work with Zebra 4C/JSB/ESB refills and Lamy Safari, Al Star, and Noto pens). I had initially try to get the Tombow L105 refill to work with this adapter in my Lamy Accent but somehow it didn't work.

However, I tried with a Zebra ESB (Emulsion) refill and it worked perfectly! Very excited about that, because I love Lamy ballpoint pens but hate their ballpoint refills.