Sailor Ink Studio 162: Ink Review

Sailor Ink Studio 162 is a fountain pen ink with a greenish-teal hue. With normal strokes, this ink shows up relatively light on paper, but with pooling, you can see a darker green color along with some purple sheening. This ink comes in a glass bottle with lots of functionality, but because it's glass, you can reuse it to mix or store other fountain pen inks and also fill your pen up directly from the jar.

Read on for our full review of this refreshing green shade!

Ink Review 

Supplies Used:

• LAMY AL-star with medium steel nib
• Rhodia No. 16 dot pad, 80g white paper
• Tomoé River 52 gsm white paper
• Leuchtturm1917 80g notebook

Smear Test (Dry Time):

• 10-15 seconds – 162 dried quite fast, even when using a medium LAMY nib, which releases a good amount of ink onto a page. The speedy dry time means the shading and pooling of the ink will be a bit less pronounced. Overall, this is an excellent middle-of-the-road outcome for this dry-writing ink.

Drip Test (Water Resistance):

• None – This ink has no water-resistant properties, and adding water can actually remove 162 from paper entirely. This can be a great quality if you use this ink as an art medium!

Saturation:

• Medium – Like Sailor Ink Studio 173, 162 has enough saturation to get darker with each additional ink swab and has lovely shade variation.

Ease of Cleaning:

• Easy – Easy come, easy go. This ink is very simple to clean from your pen with just water.

Shading:

• High – Though this ink doesn't have extreme shading properties, you'll still see subtle shading as more ink pools on a page. It may change tones slightly, but you still end up with a beautiful line on the page.

Flow:

• Low – Over the course of a few days, this ink proved to be on the drier side. It's in line with some other Sailor colors though it does not feel as dry as Manyo Haha. It didn't disrupt flow on a medium nib, but fine and extra-fine nibs may provide a dry writing experience.

 Packaging and Aesthetics:

• The Ink Studio bottles from Sailor feature a relatively plain label, but you receive a few goodies inside! Stickers are in the box to allow the marking of a converter or pen so you know what ink is in the converter. It's a very innovative and helpful way to keep track of your ink. The opening is large enough to fill a pen, so no worries there, either.

If you're interested in similar colors, check out our Swab Shop, where you can compare different shades side by side.

Summary:

Sailor Ink Studio 162 is a green ink with some teal or blue undertones that  looks marvelous on a page. It's a dry-writing ink that is great for quicker writing, yet it will still have a good flow. Plus, this ink shades nicely, so you get a bit of a fun pop when writing. Overall, it's a delightful shade we recommend if you want something a bit different, but still well-behaved and easy to use.

This color is available in 20ml bottles as well as our 2ml samples.