Things that are ridiculously small have always made me squeal with excitement. I don’t know, there’s just something about things that are comically tiny that simply makes me go “awwwwwww” with the cadence of a child that has just seen a newborn puppy.
The Pilot G2 Mini made me have that “awwwwwwww” moment.
This pen is SO small, that I actually first thought they were simply a novelty display pen, and not designed to be used. Color me surprised when they arrived filled with usable ink! The second I saw them advertised on my Amazon feed, I knew I had to have them.
Now, I’ve always loved the G2. It was my go-to pen throughout college. I first bought it at my campus bookstore, way before I knew that I had a stationery addiction. I love the smoothness of the ink, and the comparably greater vibrancy over the Bic pens that I had primarily used up to that point. My major quarrel with the pen was it’s lack of water resistance, that I had unfortunately experienced as I was enjoying a coffee at the campus cafe and had some of it leak onto my Living Systems II notes.
When I was in college, I would have loved the G2 Mini. I was one of those students who did not carry a traditional backpack, but chose to use a laptop messenger bag with just enough room for my class binders, my computer, and my lab book. I loved to color-code my notes, and was often limited due to all of my pen cases being confined to the interior of my binder. I could see the G2 Mini being useful in maintaining my binder space, whilst providing a plethora of options for my note taking.
Let’s first compare these little guys with a standard G2 Pen from Pilot. Shout out to Kokyuo for making the Yellow campus 2-ring binder such a pleasing backdrop.
Look at how small that little guy is! I would estimate that the G2 Mini is about 60% of the size of a standard G2. The tip of the pen, as well as the type of ink used in the Mini seems identical to the standard G2 in my swatch tests.
Compared to other pocket pens, the G2 Mini is easy to hold. You do perhaps sacrifice a bit of comfort, as the pen clip is now much closer to the hand than the standard G2. You may need to get adjusted to the lighter weight, as the pen is what I would assume about 40% lighter than a standard G2.
The swatch list for these series of pens can be seen below.
First thing I wanted to test was the line thickness between the standard G2 and the Mini. I chose to use the most common G2 color, black, as the comparison pen.
They are both advertised as a 0.7mm conical tip, and this was confirmed through comparing the line thickness as I wrote out the names of the pens.
Vibrancy, Viscosity, and Highlighter resistance is the same between the G2 and the Mini. They do indeed use the same ink. Not surprising, but I still needed to check.
Now, we will discuss the performance of the pens.
Vibrancy:
All pens (except light blue) have great vibrancy. Not on the level of a Uniball One, but definitely solid options for notes. The only pen with poor vibrancy is the light blue one. The ink in the light blue is just a tad too light for my tastes.
Viscosity:
The Viscosity of the pens were fairly low. They flowed out well, and for the majority of the colors I did not notice any skipping. The main exception is the light blue pen, which I think may just be defective. The ink in this particular pen also felt a little more viscous than the others, which is a sign it may be slightly dried out.
Surprising, since these are new in box, but go off I guess.
Highlighter Resistance:
As is par for the course with G2 pens, they don’t always have the best highlighter resistance. It is color-dependent. The black is the absolute worst when it comes to this, as you can clearly see the smudging of the ink as the highlighter runs over it. This is even worse with the Mildliner.
The blue is the second worst, but considerably better than the black and a lot less noticeable.
The rest of the colors have average resistance. They smudge a bit, but it is not noticeable unless doing multiple passes with the highlighter.
I really enjoyed getting to use and swatch these baby G2 Mini pens. Below are common links to where you can get these pens yourself if you are so inclined. These are not affiliate links.
Stores:
And that concludes this Spotlight.
Keep up the Pen-ergy
-StationaryGuy
StationaryGuy 
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