A Few Days with Xiaomi Sign Pen

People gotta treat themselves, sure—but you also have to factor in the possibility of gifts. So how does a Xiaomi hater like me end up with a Xiaomi Sign Pen?

The pen was a gift. There’s actually a lot of controversy around this thing—most people say it’s too expensive. 19 yuan for a pen is genuinely not cheap. And for a sign pen or gel pen, even a well-made Mitsubishi is only about 8 yuan, while Deli and M&G are even cheaper. Xiaomi dares to charge 19 and you can’t even buy it—really asking for it…

But I did buy some sign pens a while back. Mitsubishi ones, I think, also with non-replaceable refills, and way cheaper than Xiaomi…

From left to right: gel pen Mitsubishi UMN-155, sign pen UB-177, Lamy 2000.

A lot of people hype Mitsubishi gel pens to high heaven, but after using them I still feel they’re not as good as a fountain pen. For writing feel, a fountain pen is really the best…

But fountain pens smudge easily. Gel pens are nice, but the tip is hard to control…

(Yeah, my handwriting is terrible—I’m working on it.)

I used the Mitsubishi gel pen and sign pen to take meeting notes for a few days and found quite a few problems: intermittent ink skipping and railroading when writing fast were common. So after I got the Xiaomi Sign Pen and scribbled a few lines, it actually felt better than the Mitsubishi.

Most importantly… the Xiaomi Sign Pen has a nice weight to it. The Mitsubishi one is ridiculously light—I personally prefer something heavier. The Xiaomi’s shell is also way classier than Mitsubishi’s plastic. For 19 yuan it’s acceptable, I guess. After all, it’s just a “sign” pen, not a writing pen—probably enough for signing for deliveries…

Lastly, I recommend a Taobao shop, Baijia Lab. The owner’s explanations are pretty interesting.