JINHAO 500

I've recently decided to try out fountain pens to reduce my wrist strain, since they are reputed for requiring less pressure to write, among various other benefits (such as bottled inked for more economical and environmentally friendly ink refills). I ordered two fountain pens from Amazon. The other one was more than 3x the price but this much cheaper pen actually writes better than the other one despite being cheaper and having a finer nib (i.e. a narrower point and hence narrower writing width). My only real complaint is that the packaging could have been more secure and was oversized and not very padded either. The pen seems plenty sturdy though. It is certainly an big improvement over ballpoint pens. Do remember though that you'll need to buy your own ink to go with it though. I recommend bottled ink instead of the refill cartridges. Noodler's Ink seems like the cheapest ink and that's what I got and it works well in this pen. The built-in "screw converter" provides a very simple and effective ink refill system and seems far more convenient than disposable ink cartridges would be (which would also be more environmentally wasteful than an ink bottle). I was worried the ink bottle based refill system (the "converter") might not be of good quality but it actually works great. Just look up instructions one how to use screw converters for fountain pen refills from bottles and you'll be fine. The pen itself doesn't come with any instructions, but the pen is worth it for the great quality relative to the low price. The one I got is a great pen. I'm looking forward to using it more.

The weight is fantastic, it’s really pretty, and it writes really well. The cap quickly had a small malfunction but I can deal with that. It’s a good pen.

I thought this was a plastic pen but i should have looked at the specs: 37g. The one I got is 40g. it's metal. It is heavy. I'm not deducting any points for that because people with big hands like heavy pens. I have several other Jinhao pens and they all wrote great out of the box: very smooth, nib to spec (EF, F, M) and wet. This pen is very pretty. All downhill from there. The tines were out of alignment (super scratchy). The tines were so tight a Jinhao ink cartridge could barely write...after stopping for a few minutes, it wouldn't write at all, dried shut. I washed it to flush away the Jinhao ink and switched to a converter with Noodler's Black. I grabbed the shoulders of the nib and pulled them apart to open the tines a microscopic bit. Accidentally this improved the alignment. So it's less scratchy and writes for half a page or so. I turn the piston to flood the feed to continue writing. What a pain. It's got a fat iridium ball but writes as fine as a Pilot (Japanese) F nib. The fat ball will always drag more than a truly fine nib. Eventually the tines & alignment may get fixed with lots of fussing around. Jinhao pens can be tricky but If this were your very first fountain pen, you'd get mad & never try again. EDIT: Upgrading to 5 stars. The tine alignment and shut tip were fixed by pressing down hard on the nib (I don't recommend this cuz it can bust the nib). But the nib still dried up unless the piston was pumped manually. I removed the nib using the blue painter's tape trick but the feed was stuck fast. I grabbed it with a fat rubber band and rocked every which way while pulling. I cut myself twice on the feed; it's soft plastic but the plastic tip is still sharp enough to cut. The feed is keyed and whoever installed it at the factory misaligned it. After 15 minutes of tugging taking extreme care not to crush the gills the feed popped out. Under a magnifying glass I saw plastic shavings blocking the ink channel near the top where the cartridge attaches. With a fine sewing needle I scraped off the shavings. i placed the nib on top of the feed; there are no nib alignment markings so I put the tip of the feed as close as I could to the tip of the nib. Holding the nib and feed I took the feed's flat key, aligned it exactly to the pen notch and pushed. It inserted effortlessly and the nib stayed in line with the feed. After a few minutes I started writing and it is nice. Jinhao ink is dry and the feed is dry too. That dryness is how the pen gets its fine line. A drop of ink goes a long way. Even with the hassle, I like this pen. It's cheap and when fixed works well. For every day writing, hard to beat this deal.

THE FOUNTAIN PEN IS A FINE WRITING TOOL .

This is a beauty. I got it because it reminded me of my first pen, a Waterman blue. The materials are far superior at a fraction of the cost. A fine nib worried me a bit, as I have had issues with them in the past, but this one writes beautifully, no lagging or scratching problems so far. It is deep enough to accept a Waterman long cartridge (twice the size of the universal cartridges all these Chinese pens seen to use) so that is convenient. I have long since overcome any concerns about the quality of these Chinese pens...it is astounding for the price they charge. How do they do it?

Looks better in person. Great size, weight and fit in the hand. The fine point scrapes the paper and collects paper fibers, clogging the ink. You have to wipe it often or rinse under warm water if it gets too bad. Remember to cap when not writing. If you leave the cap off for more than an hour without writing, the ink dries. You’ll have to run warm water over it or briskly rub the nib on paper to get it working again. Average performance, but a fair entry level product for someone interested in fountain pens. Ink is easy to replace and fairly inexpensive.

I liked the nib, casing, and the color of this pen, but the cap doesn’t fit on it well. The ink flow is excellent, it is a nice medium size, and has good heft without being too heavy for a long writing session. It is really a beautiful pen to look at. But it drives me crazy that the cap rattles on it when closed.

Very good sub 10$ pen. I did some research and found out that a good wash with soap and water helps things tremendously. After I did that, I let everything dry and then loaded up some pelikan 4001 brilliant red ink and tried it out. It did take a moment to get the ink flowing but once it did it could keep up with my fastest writing, I was able to change the width of the line with very little pressure so the nib is very responsive. However, the pen does have some weight to it and with the cap posted it could be a little top heavy for some people. The body is short for me. To have the feeling that it's in my hand properly I need to have the cap posted. Gorgeous colors though. It looks like a fountain pen that cost many multiples than it actually costs. Overall I like the pen, it wrote very well for me even with the dry ink. I am planning on going with a "wet" ink sometime in the near future and seeing how it does with that. If there is a model Jinhao releases that is a bit longer in the body I will definitely purchase it.