Smith & Wesson Military and Police Tactical Pen

The Smith & Wesson SWPENMP is the first generation of the the SWPEN series. It comes in a range of colors from Silver, to black, to green and blue. A table of colors with links is shown at the end of this review.

Overall reviewers were impressed with this pen. Its a solid aluminum piece with a strong tactical appearance. It has a textured grip halfway down the shaft. The SWPENMP has a solid aluminum cap with a clip, perfect for clipping to a pocket. It includes a drilled hole in the cap for a lanyard if you prefer that style of wear.

Build Quality

The quality of the SWPENMB is very good. The T6061 Aircraft grade aluminum is extremely strong and gives this pen a nice heft to it. Reviewers also found that the cap was very solidly constructed and could hold up to being used as a hammer. The Cap Problem

It wasn’t all good though. Despite the aluminum being strong and the metal parts solidly constructed, there was one universal criticism of the plastic clip inside of the cap. The cap itself is aluminum, but to hold it to the pen there is are plastic clips inside the cap. Quite a few of the caps will come out of the factory extremely hard to get off of the pen. What hapens with those caps is that the plastic slowly weakens or wears out and the cap becomes looser. Thats good if your cap is too tight, but eventually with every day use the cap will no longer stay on. There is no current fix for this issue. Smith and Wesson will instead have you contact the manufacturer and pay a warranty fee of $6.95 to have the cap replaced. The caps take a year or to of heavey use to become loose, though. Unless you’re using this often as a writing instrument that should not be a concern.

Writing Quality

The Pen itself writes well. All tactical pens are heavier than your normal plastic ones, so as long as your are ok with that weight this pen will work well for you. It uses standard Parker pen refills, so the quality of writing will be on par with the quality of refill you buy. The stock fills are considered good by all the reviewers we were able to track down.

Overall

Every one who is looking for a EDC pen that works well for ocasional writing should find this to be a great option. The construction quality was uniformly good. The cap issue is a minor annoyance for those who are continually un-capping and recapping this pen. Additionally they come in a good selection of colors, which is always a nice benefit.