What has the world come to?? A blog post about a ballpoint pen at Bleistift.blog‽
Well, it is a very good looking ballpoint pen: Lamy’s xevo in lightgrey (I find the black version more boring looking, so ordered the lightgrey version).
I bought this pen for £7.90 from Pen Heaven. The price in the USA is $10 and in Europe it is €7.90.
First impressions
I didn’t realise this until I actually held the pen in my hands: It reminds me very much of the beautiful Lamy Colani, with similar organic shapes. Especially the triangular front section with its flowing shapes, but also the matt-ish off-white plastic, bear some resemblance.
The pen is extremely well made for a pen in this price range. You can see the mould lines in good light, but that is not an issue. For comparison: on my xevo [1]I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo. the mould lines are not more obvious than on a Lamy Safari.
The clip is also very well made. It looks like solid sheet metal clip, but it is actually made by bending the material on the outside, i.e. it is not solid like the one you’d find on the Lamy scribble. Just like on the Lamy 2000, a mechanism holds the clip which means the clip can swing outwards instead of relying on the clip’s material to bend when clipping it onto something.
Size
Size-wise the xevo is quite big. It is roughly similar in size to a BIC four colour ballpoint pen and certainly bigger than many other ballpoint pens that aren’t multi pens, like the Caran d’Ache 849.
The xevo is so long that in my typical shirt pockets I have to clip it in towards the middle of the pocket. The middle tends to be slightly deeper. If clipped in on the outside (like the Perfect Pencil in the image below) it would only be clipped in for a few millimetres, so would more likely fall out or get lost.
Altogether an excellent and beautiful pen for the money. My one issue is that it only accepts Lamy M16 refills, so it is nearly impossible to use a gel refill. I discuss this in more detail in the video below.
Other blog posts
If you want to read more about the xevo look at these other blog posts about the xevo (listed in chronological order)
Prices: June 2022
References
| ↑1 | I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo. |
|---|
Nice review of a great pen. The Lamy M16 gets a bad rap, but has improved in recent years. Also, you can always use the Monteverde refills in any Lamy ballpoint that takes the M16 which will give you more colour choices.
That’s an attractive and unusual pen. The clip gives it quite a vintage look to my eyes – it reminds me of quite a few ’80s pens I’ve seen in the plastic and on eBay. The warm light-grey, almost beige, colour also reinforces that impression.
Thank you for your kind comments.
Chandon, I don’t have as much experience as you but what I see confirms what you say. The one that came with my xevo is very nice 8^) nicer than the ones I remember from the past.
Koralatov, it’s very nice – and affordable. Are you tempted?
I’m extremely tempted – but trying very hard to resist that temptation. Doubly so considering a friend recently gave me a lovely two-tone Ballograph ballpoint from Present & Correct which I really like using. Once its refill runs out, I may just use that as an excuse to invest in a Lamy Xevo though…
Interesting review on the Xevo Matthias. A friend of mine that collects Lamy ballpoints, sent me the announcement for this pen as soon as it came out, but I didn’t bother reading it past were it stated this was a plastic pen. Yet, am a big fan of the Colani Number 1, and these similarities that you point out, are actually tempting me to buy into one.
Speaking of the Colani, is that mechanical pencil yours? Do you have any reputable sources about Pelikan ever releasing a Colani Number 1 pencil back then? I own several Colani ballpoints, and even retrofitted one with Schmidt’s DSM2006 mechanism, but all the “mechanical pencils” I’ve seen listed for sale or showcased on the net, use the exact same components as the ballpoint. And herein is where my doubts arise. Considering Luigi Colani was a designer with a heavily organic-bias, I refuse to believe that his mechanical pencil implementation didn’t have a way to easily feed leads into the pencil. I mean, there’s not a lot of pencils out there that you need to unscrew in order to get to the refill section. Am I missing something?