The 10 best pens for left-handed people — tested by lefties

HomeThe 10 best pens for left-handed people, tested and ranked by leftiesThe best pens were smudge-free, comfortable to hold and easy to write with.April 14, 2026, 7:00 AM EDTHarry RabinowitzTech ReporterCory FernandezCommerce EditorSkip to table of contentsWe tested pens from several brands with several different price points. Courtesy Harry RabinowitzThe drawbacks of being left-handed are rarely more apparent than when you’re in grade school. If you’re part of the club, then you know our personal vendetta against spiral-bound notebooks and binders. But as an adult, most lefty problems usually stem from occasionally smudging otherwise clean, legible handwriting, often on a card or important document, causing us to wonder if there were pens that perform better for left-handed people. Like most workplaces, NBC Select doesn’t have many lefties, but as the two southpaws on the team, we were willing to dive into the topic a bit more. We set out to find out what actually makes a great, left-handed-friendly pen and how many we’d have to test to find out. We collected a mix of product samples from beloved pen brands and tested 24 pens over the course of two weeks, including options from Sharpie, Paper Mate, Bic, Pilot and Pentel. We also tried out pens from brands outside of the office supply industry who also happen to sell promising pens, like Muji and Prismacolor.Below, we walk through the process that we used in our testing, including the criteria used to judge each pen, how we scored them, what paper we tested the pens on and more. In the end, we ended up with a great lineup of some of the best pens for left-handed people. Keep reading to get our top nine results, ranked, plus one honorable mention.RelatedselectselectThe 100 best things we’ve ever bought from AmazonWant more from NBC Select? Sign up for our newsletter, The Selection, and shop smarter.The best pens for left-handed peopleThese are our top-recommended pens of all the options we tested. The pens we tested...