PILOT Vanishing Point Red Fountain Pen, Fine Nib

This is my first retractable fountain pen, and well worth the investment.
The tank is a little small for heavy use, but perfect for signing documents , etc, during the week.
Takes some getting used to, as it looks like I’m using the pen upside down.
Ink flow is great, just the right amount of feedback on the page for me, but my husband finds it too slick.

I’m relatively new to fountain pens, but I’ve been using a pair of medium priced Parker fountain pens daily at work and home for almost a year now, and they are great. Work well, write smoothly, travel well, and none of the mess that I used to encounter as a child with my first fountain pens. For Christmas though, I decided I was going to invest in a better quality pen to use daily. I wasn’t looking for a piece of art necessarily, but I wanted a professional looking pen that delivered a truly superior writing experience. I write a lot in my work and I am in front of executives regularly. I researched for some time the various manufacturers in the US, Europe and Japan and read user reviews both pro and con. In the end I kept coming back to the Pilot Vanishing Point. My other fountain pens are medium nib. They write smoothly with good ink delivery, but I wanted a fine point. I read several user references that said the Japanese make finer nibs, so that a Japanese medium is more like a European fine point. I really wanted a fine point, but I decided to stick with a medium nib for the Pilot. That turned out to be the right decision. The nib on the Vanishing Point delivers ink with the smoothness of a medium but produces a fine line that dries quickly. Absolutely no skipping or blotching. This pen frankly makes my not-so-neat handwriting look much more legible and professional even when writing quickly.
Mechanically, the Vanishing Point is amazing. The engineering is flawless and works with a solid feel that inspires confidence that this pen will serve me well for a lifetime. And as it turns out, it also looks like a work of modern art as an added bonus. The rhodium accents are beautiful and the Carbonesque pattern on the barrel is striking, lending a subtle feel of texture to the grip.
My only complaint is with the delivery. The ink cartridge included with the pen exploded in transit and sent ink all over the inside of the case. Fortunately, the pen was not affected and the Vanishing Point comes with a converter so I am able to use bottled ink.
The twist converter draws ink into the pen easily and with no inky fingers afterward. A quick wipe of the nib and I was back in business.
I would recommend this pen to anyone who is looking to “kick it up a notch”, especially if you’re got a little bit of fountain pen experience and are hesitating to invest in a more expensive pen. This one is well worth the price!

I definitely really enjoyed this pen. I’ve collected a few different fountain pens, including some of the more economical Pilot ones but the vanishing point is definitely top tier. It’s a much lighter flow with a weighting pen that gives more of an executive feel. Would highly recommend!

Excelente pluma fuente. Escribe bastante suave y su sistema capless la hacen tan práctica como un bolígrafo.

The thought of having a clip in the way of my fingers made me discount this pen completely.

A friend continually sales pitched me on a vanishing point and since he unfortunately lives in another state, I couldn’t actually try his.

After about a month of his pestering, I decided to go ahead and order one.

As soon as I removed it from the box and picked it up, I was very impressed with the weight, balance, and overall feel. The color and pattern with the rhodium trim match really well.

Not really having an ink that matches the pen, I decided to order some, but it wouldn’t arrive until the following day so in the meantime I went ahead and inked it up with Pilot iroshizuku kon-peki since I have all the patience of a child on Christmas morning and wasn’t going to wait until the following day.

I ordered the medium since Japanese nibs tend to be a bit finer than western nibs and the line width I’d say is somewhere between a western fine and medium, perhaps even fine in some examples of western nibs.

My biggest concern was whether or not the nib would have a ton of feedback, similar to a Sailor nib. I have a Sailor 1911L and while I do enjoy writing with it, I’ve learned that my preference is minimal feedback. This nib definitely has some feedback, but is basically exactly what I like.

To a lesser extent my other concern is the nib drying out, but as I look down the end of the barrel of the pen and watch how the trap door works, I’m not as concerned.

One of the other reasons I wanted this pen was for a small field notes notebook I carry around. I have a Galen Leather cover for it, and most of my fountain pens are much too large to carry around, and typically if I’m jotting a note down, unscrewing a cap would take too long whereas this pen is quickly deployed to jot some fast notes down.

If this pen starts giving me issues, I’ll make sure to come back to update this review, but I don’t see that happening as this pen is well crafted.

Realmente tenía muchos sentimientos encontrados con esta pluma. La verdad sentía que era de mal gusto, me preguntaba porque una pluma fuente estaba tratando de imitar los lapiceros cualquiera de click. Pero después de pensarlo mucho me decidí a probarla por fin, y me sorprendió demasiado.
La marca Pilot-Namiki es una empresa que tiene muchos años fabricando instrumentos de escritura y saben lo que hacen. Me encanto el color que no es sólido, es un azul metálico con un patrón muy cautivador que se asemeja bastante a la fibra de carbono, muy brillante, y el material es de un metal lacado que para manda la hace sentirse como una pluma barata. No tengo nada malo que decir de ella, todo funciona. El plumin es de oro de 14k bastante suave y flexible A la hora de escribir. La compre en un “B” japonés que se prevé más a un “M” europeo, pero en realidad es un poco más grueso de lo que te hacen suponer en los vídeos de YouTube, mucho más parecido a grueso de marcas alemanas. Es una pluma muy húmeda y con un flujo excelente que hace resaltar las propiedades de cualquier tinta (sheen, shimmer, shading, etc). El funcionamiento de click es fácil de usar y muy satisfactorio al escucharlo. Trae un cartucho de tinta azul y ya viene adentro integrado un convertidor (que es el CON-40). La capacidad del convertidor es un poco más pequeña que los convertidores internacionales pero nunca se me ha agotado en el trabajo. La marca ha fabricado una obra de arte, que en su interior cuenta con un sistema fácil de acceder y muy efectivo a la hora de trabajar, que además te brinda mucha facilidad para limpiarlo, o reemplazar sus partes a la hora de decidir probar otro tamaño de plumin. Al escribir no te afecta en nada el Clíp el cual se encuentra del lado del plumin para evitar que haya salida de tinta al colocarla en la camisa (Muy bien pensado).
Así que como leen, esta es una pluma excelente, tan buena que acaban de pedir una Pilot Custom Heritage 823, ya que con la sorpresa que me lleve usando esta pluma fuente (la cual es de hecho uno de sus modelos más asequibles y podría considerarse una pluma de entrada a los plumones de oro por ser de las más baratas), no puedo esperar a probar las caras y ver qué encuentro con una de las plumas más Icónicas de la compañía, un deleite de seguro. Así que date ese gusto amig@, y disfruta de una de las mejores obras de arte que pudo haber creado la compañía.