#PenSwag

This pen surprised me.  I didn't know that Zebra was making cheap "disposable" fountain pens.  So I bought it.  This was the biggest waste of around 4$ in my life.  I'm not going to lie I hate the Zebra V-301.


First the body.  At first glance it seems like a really cool, sturdy aluminum body.  However, it feels cheap the moment you touch it.  The branding on the pen is large and detracts from the overall presentation of the pen.  The cap, which posts with a nice click on the back of the pen, wobbles back and forth and makes you feel like your cap will fall off.  These are large problems, but nothing that can't be overlooked.


The thing that can't be overlooked is the horrible job this pen does of writing.  When I first plugged the cartridge into the V-301 it wouldn't write.  So i pushed the cartridge in a little bit harder and it still wouldn't write.  I scribbled for about 3 minutes until it finally started writing.  Then it stopped writing again.  I wanted to scream.  I tried doing a writing sample, but got about halfway through it and quit.  The pen is so inconsitent that I am not quite sure how Zebra can put this out.  This is the worst fountain pen, be it disposable or not, I have ever used.




I wanted to like this pen.  But Zebra did everything in its power to make me hate it.

3 out of 10 mummies.

The Pilot Plumix Medium Tip disposable fountain pen does not look like much.  It looks like a cheap weirdly shaped pen.  It is cheap, but its performance is not.  When I saw the Pilot Plumix in Staples I was a bit wary.  I had just had a bad experience with my first fountain pen (Kaweco Sport before I gave it a second chance) but I was still curious about fountain pens so I gave it a shot.

1. 

The Pilot Plumix Medium tip has an italic flat nib which adds the flares and fancy stuff to my handwriting that I really enjoy.  It lays down a smooth line without any scratchiness of the nib on paper.  It does generally write quite well.  The only problem is occasional skipping, which in my writing sample happened uncharacteristically often.  Other than the random skipping it writes great. In my Black N' Red notebook there was no bleed through and very limited show through.  On thinner and or cheaper papers the bleed through and show through increase, so be prepared. 


The body of the Plumix is made of a lightweight plastic body, mine is translucent blue.  The body has cool swirls in the design of the body which makes the pen feel really interesting in a good way. However, the lightweight plastic makes the pen feel really cheap. Although the pen body feels cheap the grip is great.  The grip is contoured perfectly for my fingers and I could write with it for hours.  The cap is very small, oddly small if you ask me.  It isn't too much of a problem when the pen is capped, but with the cap posted on the end of the pen it seems very weird looking.  Overall the body feels cheap and looks interesting, but has an awesome grip.


The Pilot Plumix Medium Tip is a great entry level fountain pen.  It has the flourishes and flares of an italic tip with a very reasonable price.  The body feels cheap, and the cap is weird.  The ink is a very cool shade of blue but it skips and doesn't write consistently at times.  For a disposable fountain pen I can't ask for very much more.


7 out of 10

I've wanted a fountain pen for a while.  I saw a bunch of reviews around the internet about the Kaweco Sport. All of these reviews said that it was a great fountain pen for beginners and also easily affordable.  I hopped on JetPens and ordered the white body along with a box of black ink and aubergine purple ink.  Add in some extra money for two day shipping and I had just spent over 30$ on a pen.  Easily 3x as much as I've ever spent on a pen.


Needless to say I was excited for this pen to get here.  Around 3pm the pen arrived in my mailbox. I ripped into the packaging, which seemed a bit smaller than I expected it to be.  I pulled a tiny box, a little bigger than a lipstick container, out of the mail bag.  I slid the pen out of the box, and was disappointed again.  The pen was about 4 inches long all closed up.  I posted the cap on the end and it grew to about 5 inches long.  Still very small but more manageable at least.



Although I was disappointed with the size of the pen, I couldn't wait to have my handwriting instantly transformed into a flowing script by this fountain pen.  Once again I was initially disappointed.  It was similar to using a scratchy liquid ink pen.  It wasn't an instant transformation into a beautiful italic script.  My limited knowledge of fountain pens had me expecting something totally unrealistic.  So I was upset with my purchase.  To add to the negative attitudes of the day, I lost the pen the very night I received it in the mail.  Luckily I found it the next day.  It had been run over by a car in my parking lot (you can see the battle scars in the pictures). Despite being run over by a car the body was still in perfect working order, except for a few scratches which I like.  I cleaned out the exploded cartridge inside and threw in an aubergine purple ink cartridge.  I put the pen in my pencil case and didn't think about it for a couple weeks.


 
The Kaweco Sport Fine nib lays down a smooth crisp line.  The previous scratchiness I had experienced disappeared and it moved smoothly across all my different papers.  There was no white space in the lines, and the purple color was a pale version of the hue that wasn't distracting.  I went from hating this pen because of my unrealistic expectations to really enjoying it.  I still prefer fountain pens with wider nibs or italic/calligraphy nibs but I find myself reaching for the Kaweco Sport more often than not.