They're certainly nicer than a Bic, but I've not used one yet. I like the look of the Lamy pens better and the Al-Stars are a much nicer material than both the Preppy and Safari.

I might need to try a Preppy just to see how it writes.  

 Yes the body not as nice as safari but writes smooth. It came with ink already so not sure how it will write with other ink  

 The Al-Star comes with an ink cartridge, but I swapped them out for converters. I'm big on bottled ink.