PILOT Parallel - 6mm

An odd calligraphy pen that makes an excellent refillable highlighter

If you’ve read my review of the LAMY safari, you’ll know that I’m trying to remove throwaway stationery from my life; if you haven’t read my LAMY safari review, you should, or skip it and buy a LAMY safari.

And back to the Pilot Parallel - 6mm. As my traditional highlighter set began to dry up, I was on the lookout for a more sustainable option. I scoured the internet for recommendations, but nothing seemed to fit the bill.

Several traditional highlighters can be refilled by taking the pen apart and dipping the long fabric tip into special ink. These pens did not have good reviews.

I can’t remember how I stumbled on the Pilot Parallel, but stumble I did, and coupled it with a set of OCTOPUS highlighter inks.

Product details

  • The Parallel is a unique calligraphy pen with a parallel plate nib structure that creates precise, sharp lines and can be used at angles to create different line thicknesses.
  • The pen is long, 17cm with its cap, and oddly tapered.
  • The pen comes with one black and one red cartridge.

The good

I never used the ink cartridges supplied. I use a converter with the pen and a set of highlighter inks, which makes this setup work.

The pen truly shines as a highlighter. It outperforms most traditional throwaway highlighters, thanks to its unique nib and the incredibly smooth lines it produces.

I was worried that fountain pen ink on fountain pen ink would cause problems, but I was wrong.

The screw top is a great feature; the inks are not something you’d want leaking in your bag or on anything light-colored; they are hard to remove!

The bad

The pen is inexpensive, but it feels that way. The plastic feels plastic. You know what I mean?

The long tapered body makes it hard to carry. I travel a lot, and it doesn’t fit in my bag like my regular pens.

This isn’t fair, as all fountain pens and converters struggle with this, but changing between different colored inks requires a lot of cleaning; it takes a long time to flush this thing.

And how it’s going

It’s a highlighter; the plastic-y feel and the long body doesn’t detract from just how good of a highlighter this pen can be. I have 4 OCTOPUS inks: Neon ROT, NEON GELB, NEON PINK, and NEON GRUN.

And I have 4 PILOT Parallels, one for each ink.

Now, I have a set of highlighters in the same mix of colors I had before. But with the Pilot Parallel, I have something that will last. I won’t need to buy another highlighter, and it will be many years before I need to buy new ink. It’s a long-term investment that brings a sense of environmentally minded superiority each time you pull the pen out and satisfaction as you see those beautifully crisp lines.

This approach isn’t for everyone, and it’s more expensive than the alternative in the short-term, quadruply so, if you buy 4 inks and 4 pens… But The PILOT Parallel will be the best highlighter you have ever used if you can get over how the pen feels in your hand.