Diamine Polar Glow
Ink Review #50
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
This ink is part of the Inkvent Blue Edition (2019)
Overview
The color/properties:
Diamine Polar Glow is a sheening ink. It has a deep but vibrant blue base with a deliberately prominent red sheen where the ink pools. Polar Glow exhibited sheen on all of my test papers, and the effect can either be increased of decreased by using a wetter or drier tuned pen respectively. Because of the high saturation to get the sheen effect, there isn’t a lot in the way of shading with this ink.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
Performance on paper:
Aside from minimal bleeding on Kokuyo, there wasn’t any feathering or bleed-through on the other test papers. The dry times were slightly below average, with the larger nibs taking anywhere between 20-30 seconds to dry, and one instance on Tomoe River where the Architect nib failed to dry within 30. Keep in mind that because this is a sheening ink, it will never be truly dry and can easily smudge from residual moisture on the hand.
When exposed to water Polar Glow leaves behind a heavy blue cloud that leaves whatever is left behind effectively unreadable. There’s also a good chance that it will make a spectacular blue mess on everything else. Try not to get this ink wet.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Diamine Polar Glow has a medium-wet flow that feels lubricated enough to be comfortable, but I didn’t find it especially slick either. During my tests there was some expected trouble with the needlepoint — It writes, but it dries out too quickly in the nib to be able to write without hard starting. Each of the other nibs performed surprisingly well with no hard starts, skips, or stops during the tests. With that said, because this is a highly saturated ink, I wouldn’t expect it to last long uncapped before drying out in the nib, and this ink may also not last long in a pen that doesn’t cap with a good seal.
That leads us to the cleaning! It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it still isn’t great. The ink washed out of the nib units in only two soaks and flushes, but cleaning out the barrel of the pen wasn’t so easy. After the water ran clear what was left over was a small ring of blue residue where the crown of the piston meets the stop. The residue is easily scrubbed off, but it does mean that the pen had to be disassembled to do so. I wouldn’t recommend using this ink in any pens with sealed filling systems. Fortunately, this shouldn’t pose an issue in most pens that use cartridges or converters where any residue can easily be cleaned out with a finely twisted towel. With that said, it would be best to not let this ink dry out in a pen, or cleaning could become an extra hassle.
The residue left behind after cleaning
Value/cost per ml:
As of writing, Diamine Polar Glow is purchasable for $17 for a 50ml bottle from US retailers, making this ink $0.34 per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Polar Glow comes in the standard four-footed Diamine Inkvent bottle with a very festive blue outer box signifying the edition, and showcasing the ornate bottle inside via a round window in the face of the box. The bottle is topped with a smooth silver cap similar to the gold ones found on standard Damine bottles. The blue foil label generally represents the color inside, and the bottle has a crisp and clear transparency. The footing makes the bottle bottom-wide, allowing for stability when filling, but much like the standard Diamine bottles, I don’t find that the opening is wide enough, and I prefer to fill from this bottle via a syringe or eyedropper.
Score: 56.5/70
Price per ml: 7/10
Performance in a pen: 7.5/10
Performance on paper: 9/10
Color saturation: 9/10
Sheening: 9/10
Shading: 2/10
Dry time: 6/10
Water resistance: 2/10
Ease of cleaning: 6/10
Bottle form: 5/5
Bottle function: 3/5
*Only 70 of the 100 available points are required for an outstanding score.
Hot take…
Polar Glow wasn’t just my first Inkvent ink — it was also my first sheening ink, and in some ways, one of the inks that inspired me to start this blog. I remember it well! There was a photo, there was a gasp, there was me blasting out of my front door to my local pen store. I got the ink home and promptly filled a pen. It was awesome, but it also wasn’t the experience I had expected.
You see, the problem with inks like Polar Glow is that it can be very easy to (intentionally or unintentionally) misrepresent its qualities. Many of the photos I initially saw were of a bright and vibrant blue with an equally vibrant pink/red sheen. You might also notice, on closer examination, that the paper and background in such photos will look blown out, as if the brightness and saturation have been turned up to 11. It’s eye-catching for sure, but it’s not accurate. And who is that helping? I’m not saying it’s impossible to get those kinds of results organically, but it’s pretty unlikely. It doesn’t naturally look like that.
Don’t get me wrong: Polar Glow looks great. It’s an awesome sheening ink, and it’s a ton of fun to write with. Despite my experience, I love this ink, but there was a lesson learned. A lot of photos aren’t realistic representations of what you’re going to get from an ink, especially inks touted to have special properties.
So if you’ve had your own encounter with “the photo,” and rushed out with excitement to acquire something that turned out different than expected, you’re definitely not alone.
Written on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with a Waterman Hémisphère “Cracked Ice” (medium)
What Polar Glow actually looks (left) vs what Polar Glow doesn’t look like (right)
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook
Taken in low, single-sided lighting