Pen Update / Review

I didn't write about the arrival of my order from Jetpens straight away, but I can assure you, I was very excited! I've tested out a few of the pens so far.

I bought the Zebra Sarasa Gel Ink Pen in Grey, to compare it to the grey Pilot Juice pen that I have. Just as I suspected, I prefer the Zebra Sarasa. The colour is much more saturated and easy to read. I wrote some spontaneous bad haiku in my notebook to demonstrate:

I also purchased a Uni-ball Vision Elite BLX Roller Ball (0.5 mm) in Purple Black, mainly because I was curious about the colour. I don't normally like this sort of pen: I like a thicker line and I often find them a bit scratchy. It was beyond my expectations, though! The colour is lovely, it's comfortable to hold, and it's not scratchy at all.

I finally completed the Pilot Petit set and got the Petit3, the brush pen. I loaded it up with the clear blue cartridge that it came with and had a muck around with it. It's not like any other brush pen that I have experience with. The tip is only slightly more flexible than a sign pen. Perhaps I'm not enough of a pen afficionado, but it just seems like a thinner version of their Petit2 sign pen. Nevertheless it'll be fun to draw with, and I do love the way the writing ink looks in drawings.

The star of my haul though, was this fountain pen, the Jinhao X750.

I saw it when I checked out the New Products section of the website and couldn't resist. It looked amazing on the website, and even if it turned out to be no good, it was incredibly cheap at $8.00. For the price it also included a converter. There were 6 colours to choose from, and I chose the Ice Flower Red. It's compatible with the international standard short cartridge, which is produced by several brands in a large range of colours, so there's a lot of choice. I chose the more affordable Kaweco cartridges in Caramel Brown; they come in a pack of 6.

When I first unpacked the pen, I was instantly struck by how heavy it was. The barrel is metal and the whole pen seems to be of very good quality. Inserting the cartridge was easy, but unfortunately I had a lot of trouble with it after that. It took a little bit of effort to get the ink flowing, and then it would only write a few words or a sentence before the flow would stop again. I tried cleaning it and that still didn't fix the problem. Eventually I hit on the idea of storing it vertically, nib down. It seems to work fine this way so far. I can't store it in my pen tray with my other pens, but that's only a small inconvenience.

Now that I have it flowing well -- my gosh, this pen is a pleasure to write with! More bad haiku to demonstrate:

The line is lusciously thick, it moves over the paper smoothly, and the heaviness of the pen balances well in my hand. This pen is like a shy friend who is prickly at first and only shows her beautiful qualities after you persevere.

I haven't yet used the pen with the converter, but according to the reviews on JetPens, it works well. Now, where did I pack my bottled inks?