Arrtx – Acrylic Marker Pens

We got sent a set of Arrtx 90A Colors Acrylic Marker Pens to try out. Paint markers aren't something we usually cover, our hobby time goes almost entirely into working with hobby tools, brushes and pots, but as pens are a new(-ish) thing in the hobby the offer made us curious enough to give them a proper look.

What Is It About?

Marker pens aren't new to art and craft supplies, but they've only recently started showing up as a serious option for hobbyists, mostly as companion tools alongside traditional pots and brushes rather than a replacement for them. Arrtx, a brand with a fairly broad catalogue of pens and markers, is one of the companies pushing into that space with acrylic-based paint pens aimed at surfaces like plastic, resin, and metal rather than just paper.

The Arrtx 90A set is exactly what it says on the tin: 90 acrylic marker pens, each with a 3.8mm soft brush tip, covering a genuinely wide color range. At an MSRP of 105 EUR for the full set, often offered with a discount, that works out to roughly 1 EUR per pen, putting it well below premium brands like Edding or Copic, and below Army Painter's Speedpaints too, though budget options like Ohuhu and various no-name brands still undercut it.

The set comes in a box with a grid of 9 by 10 slots, giving you the option to properly sort and arrange the pens. Each slot lines up with a number, which matches both the printed palette on the back of the box and an included sticker sheet, so once you've used a color you can find and return it to the same spot without hunting through the whole tray. It's a small detail, but with 90 pens to keep track of, it saves a surprising amount of time at the desk.

We don't have a background in paint markers, our closest reference point is Sketchmarkers, which are alcohol-based and built for paper rather than plastic or resin. That difference shows immediately: coverage and adhesion on hobby materials with the acrylic markers is noticeably better than what you'd get out of an alcohol-based pen, which simply isn't designed for that job.

First Impressions

The brush tip is easy to control once you get a feel for it, laying down clean, confident strokes rather than the scratchy, uneven lines you sometimes get from cheaper markers. The tip has enough spring to behave like an actual brush rather than a stiff felt-tip, which makes it easier to vary line weight simply by adjusting pressure, a nice bit of control for a tool at this price. At 3.8mm, though, it's on the large side for 28mm miniature work, this isn't a tool for fine detailing on a human-scale model, but I can see a purpose on larger models, like terrain or action figures. Or if you go for an edge-highlight-heavy style of painting.

How Does It Perform?

We ran a few practical tests rather than just scribbling on paper. Coverage on both light and dark backgrounds held up well, and the standout result was painting the underside of a Hot Wheels car: white acrylic straight onto bare black plastic, no primer, and the coverage was still surprisingly solid. That's a strong showing for a paint marker, and it says a lot about how densely pigmented these are compared to the alcohol-based pens we're more used to.

The metallic colours do have a good amount of metallic pigment and create a shine on both flat and glossy backgrounds. As usual with metallics, they pop more if you go for a darker or black undercoat, which held true here as well.

We also used one to touch up a few chipped spots on an already-painted miniature, and it did the job cleanly without needing a brush and palette for a two-minute fix. In this case I grabbed a pre-painted Ultramarine Captain that I picked up on eBay, and the blue was a pretty good match. I was surprised how good the coverage of the paint is, both on the painted miniature and directly on the bare metal surface where the original paint had chipped off. That's really the pen's best use case in a nutshell: quick, low-effort repairs where getting a full paint station out feels like overkill.

The one practical downside is that the pens aren't refillable. Given the price point, that's an easy trade-off to accept, but it's worth knowing going in, especially once a color you use often runs dry. It also means these are best treated as a self-contained kit rather than an open-ended system you keep topping up over the years, which is a different mindset than most of us are used to coming from bottled paints.

Conclusion

Given the tip size, we wouldn't reach for these on 28mm miniatures where fine detail matters, at least not for every use case. But that's not really the point of a 3.8mm brush tip. You wouldn't paint eyes with these, but painting the trim of Space Marine shoulder pads or a consistent edge highlight on vehicles or terrain is a good use. Where these pens genuinely shine is anything with a bit more surface to work with: terrain pieces, larger-scale action figures (4 inches and up), or a quick pass of color on board game miniatures for someone who wants a bit more than bare plastic without committing to a full brush-and-paint setup. We could also see these working well on something like a DIY Funko Pop or an oversized studio piece like McFarlane's artist proof Space Marine. The Arrtx markers also lend themselves nicely to comic-style projects with hard-edged highlights, we're planning to use ours on terrain builds and to give some Gaslands cars a stylized, cel-shaded look.

For readers squeezing hobby time in between everything else life throws at you, that's arguably the biggest selling point here. No water pot, no palette to clean, no waiting on a blend to dry. Pick a pen, lay down a highlight or fix a chip, and you're done.

It's also worth knowing that this specific set is just one entry in a much larger range. Arrtx sells the same brush-tip acrylic markers in several other configurations, including sets focused purely on metallics, a 30-shade greyscale set, brighter poppy tones, and dedicated skin tone sets, plus a dual-tip version with 4mm and 2.9mm nibs. Alongside the acrylic line, Arrtx also makes alcohol-based markers in various tip styles, so there's room to grow into the ecosystem depending on what you actually need.

For the price, the 90-color set is a genuinely useful addition to the hobby desk, just not as a miniature painting tool. Think terrain, large-scale figures, and quick accent work rather than detail brushwork, and it earns its keep.

Link: Arrtx

The reviewed product was provided by the manufacturer.