This combination is excellent, but my camera phone may not do it justice. What we have here is the .5mm Needle Point Gel from TUL, the OfficeMax house brand of gel pens. They also make rollerballs, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, highlighters, and dry-erase markers. I have tried the rollerball, which wasn't too bad, but the ballpoint was nothing to write home about (or with). In terms of performance, this needle point is one of the best:
-The grip is comfortable and is nice and grippy, which it should be given the name.
-The needle point tip feels sturdy and has no flex.
-The ink is super black and I have yet to experience issues with smearing due to the drying time, which is not quite as bad as the Pilot G2 .7mm. The ink is also very smooth, and I have not experienced skipping at all.
-This pen is retractable, which may be good or bad depending on your preference.
-The value? You get a 4-pack of really great gel pens for about $6 U.S., which is a lot more than I can say for some of the other brands with this level of performance.
Of course there is the paper which, in this case, is the Rhodia Reverse Book. The paper is incredible, and it is known for being able to handle wet fountain pens and sign pens with ease. The paper is 80 GSM and the Reverse Book includes 80 sheets. The paper is buttery smooth, thick, and is in graph, which is excellent for most of my purposes. One interesting aspect of this paper is the purple lines, which helps many inks show quite well with the contrast of purple and whatever other color that you're using. The one thing that suffers in this review is my camera, which is 5 mega-pixels, but the lighting situation needs improvement; I will work on this going forward.
The bottom line is that either of this products would be a great choice, and if you haven't heard of either, then you're in for a treat.
Dowdyism @ The Pen Addict also has a review of this TUL pen, which is what led me to purchase these pens in the first place.
For more information on Rhodia, go check out Biffy Beans' blog http://rhodiadrive.com/
Biffy Beans also has an excellent blog called Spiritual Evolution of the Bean, which has a ton of great reviews, especially if you like to see fountain pen inks used to create great art.