Tul retractable gel pens are a bit more interesting than the ballpoints with vibrant colored ink. The blunt tip of the pen combined with the gel ink is reminiscent of the PaperMate InkJoy gel pen series. The gel is sold in a standard conical tip (medium) and a needletip (fine). The gel pens are sold in a variety of colors. We found that most of the TUL products are manufactured by WHJJK, OFFICE DEPOT, and Office Depot. The manufacturers provide TUL with a steady supply of products, and they have a good cooperative relationship with each other.

I’m quite pleased with the overall quality of the TUL line. The writing quality and build quality was much better than I anticipated. Each of the TULs seems to be a house brand competitor to a brand name and I feel like I should probably do a side-by-side comparison of the TUL version against the name brand versions, particularly the gel pen. I suspect its supposed to directly compete with the Pilot G2 and the Pentel Energel. I think the TUL version is comparable but without doing a true side-by-side I can’t say for certain if the performance is exactly the same. As for the rollerball, ballpoint and mechanical pencil, the TUL brand versions are on par with other products in the same category. I think the mechanical pencils is particularly appealing with its retractable, extra-long eraser and rubberized barrel. Well, I think it kind of looks cool. The plastic there we see the top button has, ah, this plastic shell around it, and it just makes it look a little cooler. We've seen this a fair bit, Uh, some other manufacture do that. I think, like maybe some jet streams I'm trying to recall off top my mind that I'm not quite sure. Let me see. Ah, no, not zebra, but it's similar. A few people do that. Just a nice little design tweak You can see the blue piece inside is actually doing the work. This outside pieces, just a shell that looks cool. There you see it. Now it's functional. A CZ, really, all there is to it, and reasonable grip. It's kind of a harder plastic. All right. This is a rubber, but it's hard like a plastic, and it's it's not quite a soft touch material. It's rubberized, but there's no road give to it. So and this piece is a little short. It's not tapered around it anyway, so I'd say it's reasonably comfortable, but not very special. Uh, the nose piece is obviously quite blunt. I'm not quite sure why they made it so short. I guess they wanted to look different from kind of amore. Tapered knows, but, uh, it's fine. It's functional. If you open this off, you see the newest piece it comes off, and it's just this tiny little metal thing, very squat looking inside. One tester said, “The heft makes it feel expensive and substantial. Aesthetically, it’s very pleasing, and the writing is easy and smooth.”The design of this rollerball pen can also be a point of contention with users. A few of our testers loved the substantial flow of ink from its slim 0.8-millimeter tip, but they found that the pen's crosshatched grip was uncomfortable to hold for longer periods of time. Others found this design to be a major plus and actually conducive to the writing experience. Although the judgment of a pen's performance is somewhat subjective, it's important to understand the differences between the five most prominent pen categories and their respective ink types so that you know which ones are most compatible with your writing style. We have the very standard looking gel refill, kind of looks like a pilot g to size gel refill. And there's really there's no branding everything on here. It just says, I guess that is a D B 106 I'm not sure is that there's aren't any of the like. They're not manufactured codes that I'm familiar with. So none of it really is like, Oh, that's obviously from paper made or pen tell. That's not really clear. So it's just a very standard looking gel refill. Obviously, uh, depends are refillable. So there's that.

On the whole, the closest comparison to Tul would be Staples’ Tru Red. FAQs Does Tul make their own pens? The rollerball is the only capped pen that was included in the kit. The gel and ballpoint pens are both retractable and the mechanical pencil can retract not only the lead but the lead tube as well making it easier to transport and protect the lead tube from damage. Did someone say erasable? “They erase with no marks left behind,” says WeAreTeachers reader Holly R. How amazing is that? Tired of hand cramps when you’re still in the middle of grading? “I have arthritis in my hands and these are the only pens I can use,” explains a reviewer. “Not only do they not hurt my hands, they keep them from aching with the large amount of writing I am required to do.”Looking at Tul’s gel pens, the closest visual comparison is probably to the Uniball Signo UM-151/Signo DX, which is an affordable plastic pen but one with clean styling and excellent day-to-day performance. Over the past few years we’ve seen this trend reverse, not only with brands like Tul but but an improvement in quality from Bic, PaperMate, and other mainstream pen brands. Tul even sells limited edition pens, like the Pearl ballpoint and gel pens.

Looking for more brands like Tul? The companies pens are most like those from Pentel and Kaco, while their disc-bound notebooks are similar to those sold by Levenger. Felt-tip pens are also known as marker pens or porous-point pens due to the porous material of their tips. These pens actually encompass a wide group of marker-type utensils — both permanent and nonpermanent – but the ones that are used for writing on paper contain water- or pigment-based dye. The colors are quite vibrant, which makes them good for art purposes, but that’s not the goal of the pen. The Tul medium is quite wet, almost like a 1.0 mm. This means it’s heavy for many paper types (like a Rhodia) and slow to dry. In fact it’s much slower to dry than a comparable Energel or Sarasa gel pen. We researched pens within each of the above categories individually. Due to each pen category's unique ink type and design characteristics, we decided that the pens within them should be judged against each other, not across categories.Tul also sells customizable notebooks, which are essentially binders not unlike a Filofax, Levenger Circa, or Traveler’s Notebook. These notebooks are bound with plastic discs and have a large number of cover options a well as many accessories for the inside. I wanted to like this pen so badly but the refill was horrible. The barrel is excellent though, leaving some room for improvement. Still, it was a poor overall experience.

The logos and graphics are minimal and minimal branding is really quite an appealing feature to me in pens. I find a lot of modern “big box store” pens have way too much text, graphics and branding on them. The TUL series is a nice antidote to this. The thought of Office Depot using all their sales data and insights to produce a pen that’s better than that of their partners seemed intriguing to me, but that’s not the case with the Tul gel pen. This is an OK, but not great, gel pen that is jumping into a highly competitive class. With all sorts of incredible gel pens sold today, there is no reason to go with the Tul. I am a fan of the TUL pen lineup from Office Max, except for the ballpoint. The original design was flat out terrible and the new model is better in barrel alone. Writing performance is a blobby mess, doing everything it can to keep the Uni-ball Jetstream at the top of the ballpoint pen heap.

Tul Retractable Gel Pen Review

Next to pens, teachers love their dry erase markers. That’s why we did a Dry Erase Marker Showdown: Which Brand Is The Best For Classroom Use? If you take a close look at these pens you will see that they are an attempt at a high-end office product — something rivaling a Uniball Jetstream or Pilot G2, not simply the cheapest pen possible. For years big box retailers sold their own brand pens which were simply aimed at being as cheap as possible, but this race to the bottom led only to poor quality products and unhappy consumers. As far as writing smoothness goes, the Uni-Ball Vision Elite may be the best of the bunch. Our testers found its fluid ink flow quite exceptional, with one person saying, “I thought it wrote very smoothly. I also love how dark and rich the ink appears.”