Karas Kustoms Render K Mini Thoughts

When it comes to new pens for my EDC, I probably only try out a handful of nicer ones a year at most. I've seen Karas Kustoms pens all over Instagram for awhile now and was intrigued enough to want to buy one eventually. I found the Render K Mini on clearance for $30 on their site which seemed like a great price for a higher quality pen. My biggest gripe with it is that you can't put the cap on the body. I knew this going into it though. I mostly wanted to see if the quality and form factor would work out. It's the perfect size as an EDC pen! I wish more companies would do compact pens like these. Karas Kustoms discontinued it, so I'm assuming it didn't sell well enough. What a bummer, because it is a neat pen. I still think the Fisher Bullet space pen is the king of compact EDC pens at the moment, though there are more and more popping up.

Onto the Render K Mini, it's a very high quality pen. It is nicely machined out of aluminum. The threads are smooth, and I've never had any problems with the cap coming unscrewed. There's no rattling when you shake it either. The knurling around the top of the pen near the clip is well-done. It allows you to differentiate what end of the pen you're grabbing as well as making it easier to take out of the pocket. The packaging is pretty nice for the price as well. It actually comes in a custom box, which is much nicer than the crappy plastic bag for the Hinderer Investigator pens. These used to come in a ton of different colors too. Now you can only get them in a silver, brass, or copper body with a silver, black, tumbled, or copper grip. I have the silver body and tumbled grip variety. The brass and copper options will run you an additional $10 to $25 for each piece depending on what configuration you do. I do like that you can do various grip and body combos. It's nice to see that level of customization on pens. I wish I was able to get a purple one, as this silver is a little too shiny for me. As I mentioned earlier, you can't put the cap on the end of the body or you'll badly scratch up the pen. This is a minor annoyance since you always have to make sure you don't lose the cap when you're writing with it. It's relatively easy to unscrew the pen one-handed if you had to. It of course doesn't beat the one-handed use of a clicky pen though. Karas Kustoms pens are all made and designed here in the USA as well. They've also got a multitude of other clicky, capped, and fountain pens if you like the look of this one but need something bigger.

As far as how it writes, I've mostly enjoyed it. A slight issue I've got is that the refill has a bit of give to it when you're writing. I can feel the refill pressing against the spring, which makes these slight clicking noises. I've not had issues like this with cheaper ballpoint pens, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Any refill should be completely solid in the pen when writing in my opinion. Besides that, this feels great in the hand. It's a slick design with no machining on the grip area, but honestly I'm fine with that. I've never felt like this would slip out of my hand due to lack of grip. The size, about 4.25" long, is perfect for writing too. There's more than enough to grab onto without your hand feeling too cramped. It's also a lighter weight pen, around 1.1 ounces I believe, so it doesn't weigh down your hand unnecessarily. They come with a Schmidt Easyflow 9000 ink cartridge. I've never used one of these refills before, but I've liked it. It's a gel refill that writes smoothly. These can also take all sorts of Parker and some of the Fisher refills. Overall, the pen does feel good in the hand although I didn't like the springiness when I was writing. I just got a Tactile Turn pen that has that same springiness, so maybe it's a fault with the design of these machined pens. Who knows. It's not the end of the world by any means. I'm just very picky.

This pen does carry well due to the light weight, small size, and good clip. I love that the clip screws on with two flat head screws. It makes it easy to replace if it somehow broke/bent weirdly. I don't see that happening unless you really abuse your pens. I'm sure if you wanted to rock it clipless, you could do that too. The clip works exactly as it should. I have no major complaints about it. It's a little tight, so it might have issues with thicker materials. It has clipped to everything I've attempted to clip it on. I like that it doesn't stick out that far, which helps keep this pen on the slimmer side. For you dudes with actual pocket space, it should be easy to carry in the pocket.

Ultimately this pen gets the boot since it's not purple and the cap doesn't post (apparently that's what it's called when the cap can sit on the body). I'm impressed enough with Karas Kustoms as a company that I would be interested in trying out some more of their pens. The Retrakt looks like a solid clicky pen. The Render K Mini is a cool pen though. If you don't mind the cap issue, you can't go wrong for $30. Here's a link to their site if you want to check them out. It didn't fit all my preferences, so unfortunately I'll be selling mine. It was a fun pen to try out though. I'd love to see more pens out there in this size range. Thanks for looking!