Zebra V-301 review

[azkid]

I was in Walgreens the other day and on a whim searched for, and actually found, a fountain pen for sale: a Zebra V-301.

Zebra 301 pencils and ballpoints became my 'go to' writers some years ago, long before I discovered fountain pens. They're decent, low cost, and they've lasted awhile.

As you might guess, I held similar, modest hopes for their $4 fountain pen. Alas, I have come away really disappointed.

Hard starts, skipping, and insufficient volume of ink flow have made the pen unusable even in the most basic introductory testing.



The design is modern and appealing, similar to its cousins, with stainless steel and black plastic. It features a hooded, cylindrical nib, vaugely reminiscent of mid-century American offerings whose names don't deserve to be tarnished by associating them in any way with this unfortunate attempt at a pen.



The feed, however, is a wick, not ebonite or plastic. I have seen this type of feed on only one other cheap pen. That pen didn't work, either.

I installed one of the supplied ink cartridges and immediately had severe hard starting problems. I attempted to remedy the misalignment between the nib slit and feed. And this seemed to help somewhat but it was no cure. Skipping and hard starting were still present.



Eventually, after more fiddling, the pen was able to write nearly a full page in cursive non stop without skips or hard starts.

That is, until it it seemed to run out of ink. Plenty was left in the cartridge so I suspect the wick feed cannot keep up with demand of cursive writing, despite the low volume of ink and fine line delivered to the page.

Then I noticed the crack in the plastic "faux feed" that covers the wick. Maybe I broke it fiddling. Yikes.



At any rate, I haven't bothered to test further as I don't see the point. I certainly am not going to try to use it for work.

I may have gotten unlucky with this pen. I could try exercising the warranty.

It's too bad they couldn't deliver the same acceptable level of performance that their other writing instruments do.

Though, Ishould have seen this coming when reading the back of the package and Zebra welcomed me to the world of "temperamental" writing instruments.