It comes in an absolutely lovely display box. This is the nicest packaging that I have seen for a fountain pen – even the fancier ones I have tend to come in little “jewelry boxes” which could contain anything, well, anything long and thin. In contrast, the M205 Duo’s packaging is very specific to the particular pen and suits it perfectly.

The pen itself is a standard M205, except that it is a yellow demonstrator. (If you have an M200, which I do, it’s basically the same pen but with silver trim instead of gold.) It’s smaller than it looks in the pictures, but not too small even for those of us with fat fingers, and extremely lightweight. It seems quite orange in the picture below, but it isn’t, really, that orange – that is the light.

The Duo comes with a 30ml bottle of Pelikan radioactive¹ fluorescent highlighter ink, and again, we come up against the limits of photography: it is not as green as it looks in the photograph below. Though it does still have a bit of a green tinge.

Here is a scan of some writing with it, which is heavily adjusted to try to make it a bit more obvious the difference in line widths. It’s basically impossible to scan fluorescent ink and have it look like real life. Let me emphasise that it this is just for nib size comparisons. What does the ink look like in practice? Imagine a particularly bright yellow highlighter that has not had a chance to dry out at all, and has been freshly uncapped. When considering the benefits of this sort of pen for use in practice, imagine that it will continue to be like that indefinitely, rather than drying out a bit and being disappointing (which has always happened with ink highlighters that I’ve used) and if it ever starts to run low you can just top it up. This is the benefit of a fountain pen highlighter, the regular flow.

The pen writes very smoothly, and if you are after a BB nib for other purposes apart from highlighting, an M205 BB nib unit will likely please you. The line is certainly thinner than you would normally get from a normal highlighter, which means that it is best for underlining and circling, but you can colour in larger sections if you really want to, and the size gives the advantage that you can also write short notes with it.

I was asked when showing this off whether you could use another ink and the answer is of course yes – it’s a piston filler and you can load it with any ink you fancy. You can also change the nib for a narrower one; I bought mine from Pelikan Pens, and they offer nib replacements pre-order, or you could buy another nib later on (Pelikans are very easy to change nibs with, the units just screw out and in again).

Why would you buy this?

The question is a fair one. I bought mine because… all right, I can’t really explain it, I just loved the idea. I don’t even do much highlighting, though I will be making an effort to do more.

You might buy it if

1. you just love the idea;
2. you do a lot of highlighting, have some disposable income, and want something high-quality to highlight with. This isn’t just a novelty item, it really is a good highlighting pen. The ink flow is regular and the nib, while broad, is still a lot more precise than a squishy felt tip. I couldn’t honestly tell you that it would save any money, but it would be a more effective tool.
3. you want to buy a present for somebody who does a lot of highlighting, and likes pens. The box really is lovely. Do you have any academics, lawyers, students or other people who review a lot of paper papers in your life? Is it their birthday soon? Are you sure they wouldn’t rather have a case of wine? Bear in mind that you can buy this as well as a case of wine. Go on, they deserve it. It’s only money. You can’t take it with you.

The 69L is made in India – I understand that the company has two main lines, the Wality (I have a couple of these too) which is designed for export, and the Airmail, which isn’t, despite the name. I purchased mine from the seller ashishwakhlu via a sales post on Fountain Pen Network for a very reasonable sum, and at time of writing there are three left, but I understand that they are also for sale on eBay.

You’ll see that it is pretty big – it might be a bit much if you have teeny tiny hands, though I didn’t find it too bad even though I mostly prefer smaller pens. You will also see that it holds a lot of ink. Some readers might not be familiar with the “eyedropper” filling mechanism – this is one of the earliest and simplest systems. Instead of inserting cartridges, or putting the nib into a bottle of ink and sucking some up with a piston or a squeezy sac, one just unscrews the top of the pen and pours ink into the reservoir. (The name “eyedropper” refers to the common use of an eyedropper to do this, and some antique ink bottles had integral eyedroppers in the caps. Some – e.g. the 4.5oz bottles of Noodler’s inks – still do, but otherwise you will need your own eyedropper, or syringe, or very small funnel, or miniature squid, or other).

Eyedroppers have their issues – they’re a bit awkward to fill on the move, they can be messy to fill, and when they are low on ink the heat from your hand can make the air in the reservoir expand slightly which results in the odd blob coming out of the nib. They do, however, excel in terms of simplicity (there’s simply nothing to be broken) and capacity. There is no filling mechanism to take up space inside the barrel and so the whole thing can be filled with ink. The Airmail holds about 4.5ml of ink, which is around 3 times as much as a piston-filler or gel pen, and you can easily see how much is left and top it up, say, before a trip or exam.

The nib is a fine one¹, and of good quality – smooth and a comfortable writer. Combined with the huge capacity this means that you’re even less likely to run out of ink. I’ve not had any issues with starting or writing; flow seems good and regular. The pen feels tough and secure when held – thick plastic with a screw-on cap – but it is not heavy, and the balance is good, not too biased in any particular direction (I’ve not written with it posted, nor would I want to, but the cap is not too heavy). In terms of looks, I’m not a fan of showy pens, but I find the swirly purple colour attractive and not distracting – in any case it balances the simplicity of the transparent barrel.

Overall, I’m very happy with the Airmail. I have it loaded with Noodler’s Heart Of Darkness and it’s become a general go-to – comfortable and useful for all purposes, very much a “desert island pen”. Certainly for the money it’s of excellent quality, and if you like a fairly fine nib and do not have an issue with largish pens, I would definitely recommend it.

(Flickr slideshow)

Whilst on eBay I decided to risk the enormous sum of $4.90 on the pictured Jinhao Missile fountain pen, delivered from Hong Kong by this seller who appears to deal in smoking accessories and fountain pens. This seems like a line in stock that would be approved of by many writers, perhaps with the addition of hipflasks.

I do have a few compact fountain pens, including two OHTO Tasches (which are terrific pens). However, they all take standard international cartridges rather than filling directly. I do have quite a few cartridges around but all of my favourite inks are in bottles, and the Missile is a squeeze-filler. It is possible to fill cartridges from ink bottles using a syringe, but it’s a bit of a pain. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly a huge monetary outlay.

Like the previous pen I ordered from Hong Kong, postage took around two weeks. I’d forgotten about the order when it arrived, which made it a nice surprise. Perhaps I should order myself more products with long delivery times; it would be like having Random Stationery Birthdays.

Positive points

• Reliable fine nib (i.e. “European” EF or finer – about the same as my Pilot Décimo). Neither particularly wet nor particularly dry. Worked well with the inks that I tried it with – Diamine Oxblood, Poppy Red and Umber – with good flow, no notable issues with drying out.
• Definitely very compact indeed. It’s around the size of a Fisher Space Pen, and slightly slimmer. Light, but with a metal body that seems durable.
• Attractive finish; they come in various different colours.
• Fills directly from a bottle, which I consider a plus point. There is no cartridge-filling option, so you would have to be sure to fill it regularly, but I plan to use it with red ink for editing and annotations where it’s unlikely to run out in a hurry.
• Filling via squeezing the bar on the metal filler sheath isn’t very effective – the sac never gets very full. However, this sheath slides off easily, and squeezing the sac itself is much more effective. Some rapid squeezes can fill it pretty much completely, with just a few small air bubbles. The nib being as fine as it is, the pen won’t get through that amount in a hurry.
• Extremely inexpensive.

Negative points

• Obviously, if you don’t like very fine nibs, this is not the pen you are looking for.
• It being very small does mean that it would be a bit of a strain to write with it for any length of time. Also it won’t hold very much ink. On the other hand, tiny fountain pens aren’t meant for transcribing encyclopedias with.
• Posting the cap, i.e. putting it on the end of the pen, has to be done quite firmly or the cap falls off in use. Not a huge problem.

Overall

A quality and very compact pen for a very good price. If you are a regular user of bottled ink – and you should be – and want a pocket pen, this would be an ideal one to try.

Most of the “commemorative” models appear to be pretty much the same pen, with different styling; there are assorted ones of years, and historical emperors and scientists and so on. I picked the above as it had only two colours and no swirls, gemstones etc, unlike most commemorative models, but was still reasonable showy. It took two weeks from the time of purchase to arrive, which seems quite fair for something coming by regular post from the other side of the world – I’ve had packages take longer than that to arrive from the US.

Packaging

The pen came in an orange card packet – well, all right, it came in a Jiffy bag, but inside the bag was a packet – which has the Jinhao logo, some Chinese writing which I can’t read, and a picture of the Terracotta Warriors with an incorrect aspect ratio. (See photos 1 and 2.) Hmm. Well, it’s only the wrapper. Inside this is a solid little wooden box with more writing and a sketch of some of the marchers burnt into the wood. The inner lid has a map of the actual route of the March, and there was what looks like a Jinhao catalogue and a couple of cards (guarantee?) above the actual pen.

Construction and appearance

The first thing you notice is that this is a heavy pen. It isn’t as if you can’t lift it off the desk without a hernia, but it has a lot of metal in the construction. Don’t drop it on your toes if you are not wearing shoes, and don’t throw it around the room in frustration unless you want to break something. It isn’t especially huge or thick; almost exactly 14cm capped, about 16.3cm with the cap posted, and 12.2cm without a cap at all. The barrel is around 1.3cm in diameter at the largest point. This is only slightly bigger than a Safari, and smaller than the Schneider iD that I posted about earlier. The body and cap are smooth to the touch. In the hand it feels well balanced, though the cap is heavy – you might wish to write without it depending on your preference.

Nib and writing feel

I am not sure whether it has a broad or medium nib – the selling entry seems to say both – but it writes much like a typical Western medium (all manufacturers have their own special interpretations of what “fine”, “medium” and “broad” mean in any case). This is a bit fatter than I normally prefer but suits the pen itself, and occasionally I do like the indulgent feeling of writing with a fat nib. Whatever the breadth, it is a large gold-plated nib with some Chinese characters, a small picture of some mountains and “Jinhao” at the base. I must say that my nib seemed a little tarnished – it was not very shiny.

It comes with a Jinhao-branded convertor, which is fine with me. The first time I inked the pen (with Diamine Midnight – a lovely dark blue, incidentally) I was surprised at how wet it was writing. I had previously washed and flushed it thoroughly, and thought I might have overdone it with the cleaning, but assorted other things didn’t make any difference. After some experimentation, I believe that it is the convertor – the seal is not great, it feels loose, and it’s important to make sure it is plugged in properly. I have had this problem with some Lamy converters before as well. I’m not sure quite what type of convertor or cartridge this pen takes – it didn’t fit the Rotring standard international convertor that I had lying about unused, certainly, it seems to need a wider neck. This could be an issue in the future when it comes to spares.

Now, though, being a bit more careful when loading, it writes with a sane ink flow, and the nib is lovely and smooth. As I said above it is quite broad for me, about the width of a Safari with an F nib – comfortable for when one is journalling or writing letters, not so great for scribbling in one’s micro Rhodia pad, unless two words per page are fine with you. The weight makes writing feel a bit more meaningful as well, I find, even given that it is just the usual drivel coming out of the end.

Overall

I am happy with this pen, and while I’m not going to be putting it into my bag unless I am going somewhere potentially dangerous and wanting a concealed cosh, I will be keeping it on my desk and picking it up for random journalling and scribbles. It looks classy, it has a good “expensive” weight to it, it was good value, and it writes well. I would certainly be interested in buying more Chinese pens if they have such good price-to-quality ratios, even if it means waiting two weeks for deliveries. The only slight worry is the convertor/cartridge type; I shall have to do a bit more research on that point.

It’s an absurd-looking pen, but has a certain charm if you like that sort of thing. The cap is immense – the photos really don’t do it justice – and the clip on it is bizarrely huge as well. (I bought one with green trim, but it is available in a number of colours.) The body is a translucent black plastic which shows the cartridge or convertor. It is overall lighter in weight than one might think, though, yet it’s solid in construction – it doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy at all.

The grip is rubbery and deliberately contoured to encourage a particular sort of hold. There is a flattened dip on the top right for one’s index finger, and underneath, a shallower but wider flattened part for the middle finger. Some people hate this sort of thing but it fits in quite well with how I hold pens. The grip, the weight and the generous but not excessive width lead me to think it would be a good writer for extended periods.

This model has a medium nib, which is a “European” medium i.e. fairly broad, and is also slightly italic. It is pleasantly smooth on the paper and ink flows well, or at least it does now. Originally when first filling it the thing had trouble starting and was writing quite dryly. “Oh gawd,” I thought, “another fifteen quid wasted on a pen I’ll never use,” but being sensible I gave it a good flush and a soak for an extended period with a little washing-up liquid to clean out any gunk from factory or storage or malicious pen pixies, and now it seems fine, at least with Waterman Florida Blue which is what I have in it at the moment.

The iD takes standard international cartridges, and has space for the usual two back to back inside. I ordered a Tombow convertor at the same time for use with bottled ink and this seems effective, in fact a pretty good convertor all told, with a good seal and no air getting in.

Overall, I am happy with this pen. It has a fatter nib than I normally prefer, but it is a nice comfortable writer, and if I didn’t need a rounded fine nib to write in my usual appalling spider scrawl (being fairer to myself here, I also draw bubbles and arrows and diagrams a lot, and a broadish italic nib is not good for that purpose) I could see myself using it regularly. Somebody looking for a relatively inexpensive and comfortable pen for long periods of writing – exams, theses – might find it pretty ideal. Do flush it out first though.

Additional information (Tuesday 27 July 2010)

Having used the iD for a while now, I have noticed a peculiarity – it takes forever to clear ink out of it. I don’t know where it’s hiding it all, but whereas most pens will run fairly clear after a few fillings and ejections of water with a convertor, the iD keep pumping out the ink for ages.

This is a little annoying if you change inks as frequently as I tend to, but for most people it is probably an advantage of sorts, as if one sees an empty cartridge or convertor there’s likely still quite a bit of writing left in the thing, giving one time to find a refill.