Jinhao X159 fountain pen review

Jinhao made me very curious with one of its latest fountain pen in the lineup. I had to have the pen just because of its nib. It is a bit unconventional for a basic pen to come with an interesting nib, and on top of that, the Chinese nibs usually have nothing special to them, just the same plane Fine or Extra Fine nibs. This pen is special not because it breaks the XF / F tradition, but because of its size. The pen that caught my eye is the Jinhao X159. The X159 comes with a number #8 nib, which is quite big compared to more conservative sized nibs. A "normal" size for a nib is 5 or 6, so this is 2 numbers bigger. It is not easy to judge the size based on this information but, there is a noticeable difference when you pick the pen up.

So with my eye on the interesting offering from Jinhao it was time to embark with patience, as I ordered the pen off Aliexpress.

Jinhao X159 is a sibling of the older model Jinhao 159. I can't compare the two as I don't have the 159. But the main difference is that the 159 has a regular nib size and a metal body while the X159 is made out of plastic and has a big nib.

I have seen some reviews of the X159 prior to buying it, and in general people focused very much on its appearance, with clickbait titles like: "Montblanc replacement", "Better than a Montblanc??", etc. The pen is a "copy" of the Montblanc 149 to the millimeter.

This was not what made me buy the pen, but the unusual nib that came with it. I was very curious how a number 8 nib feels to write with. If you are interested in the pen and my experience using it for a little bit over a month, just jump and the review part, and skip how I ramble about the world...

Me rambling

I advise you jumps straight to the introduction

You have been worn, last chance to scroll..

First thing I have to point out: clickbait titles promoted everywhere, in every domain, and by everyone. Many who reviewd this pen have made this pen a Montblanc nemesis. Why would a fountain pen which costs $6 replace a Montblanc? Just because it "copied" it's design?(coming back to this part in a minute). Foremost, the Montblanc's are more a status thing than anything else. You buy one because celebrities, presidents, kings and queens have used them over these years. And that makes them desirable. Because they are expensive, not everyone can afford one, so this brings the exclusivity to the table (the same thing with brands like Rolex or any other brand that is focused on finer things in life). Nobody will buy a Jinhao, a Wing Sung or something else along these lines instead of a real Montblanc, just because they look the same...(I have to clarify that Jinhao is not dishonest about the pen, it doesn't have the Montblanc's logo, and Jinhao is present on the clip, they look the same in general appearance, the pen is NOT A FAKE). So why start a review with something like this. I could write much more about this, but it is more than enough.

My second point is about how Jinhao "copied" the design of the Montblanc 149. The pen is a cigar shape, which is considered by everyone a classic. The design is nothing innovative, and several other brands have products similar fountain pens in size and looks. Sailor King of Pens, Pilot Custom, etc. Aren't those copies?
There are so many original designs until the water starts to get murky, and you see influences here and there, and after many inspirations and many years it is hard to tell which design is the legit one and which is the copy. If Jinhao had made the pen a few millimeters thinner or thicker, shorter or longer, would it still be a copy?

Not to start my third point on how fountain pen producers (like Kaweco but not exclusive) rest on the laurels of designs that are decades old, without innovating and coming with new products on the market.

Introduction

The pen arrived in a mail bag, those yellow paper ones with a coating of bubble wrap inside, nothing more, nothing less.

First thing that I notice was the size. The pen is large in every dimension. It is a long and thick pen (horizontally challenged).

What surprised me, even more than the size, was its appearance. I find this cigar shaped look a bit boring and dated, also I am not a fan of gold trim. I usually go for the silver trim if available. But this particular pen was a big surprise right from the moment I took it out of the bag. It surprised me that it came in one piece with so little protection, and how beautiful it looks. I ordered the X159 in blue. I didn't want another boring black pen, but I wasn't feeling too ambitious to buy an orange one.

There are 2 variants of the pen. The original model came only in black with silver trim, and the successors came in a multitude of colors with gold trim and nib. The difference from the information available is the number of turns to take the cap off. Original 3, second iteration 2.

The blue resin in person looks unbelievable. It is a dark blue that in the right light looks splendid, from teal, navy blue and in dimmer light it looks black. The gold trim compliments the color very well. I am very pleased with what arrived.

Body

The pen is made entirely out of resin (plastic). Even though it is big, in hand it feels just right. 

 

The top of the cap is nicely rounded and besides the esthetic purpose, it also holds the clip in place, fixed between the finial and the cap. The metal clip is strong, made out of rolled metal, nicely finished with no sharp edges. The cap also has a golden ring at the bottom, on which Jinhao and X159 is written. I am not fond of the font used, but the fact it is discrete makes it better, as you don't see it unless you are looking for it.

The opposite end of the pen is not finished so nicely as the cap. It has a gold ring on the barrel, with no other function beside esthetic. The barrel finishes with a rounded shape, but the injection molding is visible.

Also, the molds lines are visible on the barrel, although you really have to look for them.

The cap is removed with 2 and a quarter turns, reduced from the 3 turns on the original. I think Jinhao is trying to make a compromise between the functionality and integrity of the pen. What do I mean? The Jinhao 992 which is a similar looking pen in a smaller size has a cap that needs just a little over 1 turn to take off, but the original X159 needed 3 turns, while the X159 gen 2 has 2 and a quarter turns... I think Jinhao resorted to this to make the cap more secure and solid. Because even with 2 turns the cap doesn't feel very solid. There is play between the cap and body (side to side) and reducing the number of threads would just accentuate this situation.

The section tapers a bit a flares just above the nib. The threads are very smooth and shallow. They offer a comfortable hold. I keep my fingers on them as they are smooth enough for griping but offer good grip as well.

The pen can be capped, but for this one I think you are better off laying the cap on the table. The pen becomes huge and a bit top-heavy. The barrel is long enough for the pen to be used uncapped without any problems. I have to state that I usually prefer not to cap pens.

The barrel screws onto a gold metal section. The threads are well done on both ends. But a concern I have is the thin walls of the plastic barrel due to having threads on the inside and on the outside. Also, the plastic doesn't feel that sturdy. I feel you need to treat this part very gentle, or it just might crack.

There is an o-ring at the end of the metal threads, with the purpose of preventing the barrel to be tighten too much, and cause cracks in the material. I will have to see how good it will work in the long run. So far the ring did it's job.

As most Jinhao pens, this one comes with a converter. The X159 takes international cartridges long and standard.

Size

The pen is big and bold. It has a length of 15 cm

 Taking off the cap leaves a length of 13 cm

The nib 

The nib is the star of the show, being a number #8 nib it dwarfs the regular fountain pens. The nib is a dual tone, gold and silver, and has a nice design, with Jinhao and F printed in the middle. The lines engraved on the nib don't match the dual tone very well, but it still is better than a plane silver look.

The pen writes really nicely out of the box, at least the one I've got. The ink flow is just right, even though a bit on the low side, like the majority of Chinese pens. The feed is interesting, very big matching the nib and it looks like it can hold a lot of ink. I haven't had any starvation issues or burps so far. The fins of the feed are very long and soft.

Even though the nib is large, it doesn't flex at all.

Reverse writing is possible but it is dry.

What I don't like about the X159

Even though the pen looks impressive, you can definitely see some corners cut. Take into account the pen is just 6$ so don't expect miracles from it. The injection molds are barely visible, but they are there.

Another thing that makes me raise an eyebrow are inner and outer threads on the barrel. The section is very thin in that place, and the material might crack from normal use, or if by mistake you over tight it. I always feel I am stepping on thin ice when I take off the barrel to ink it. I have the same felling with the Jinhao 992, so if you tested that one and are ok with its build, you will be very happy with this one as well.

Another small minus to the pen's construction is the cap. It has a little play side to side when screwed on, and it's making some cracking sounds. Tightening the cap helps, but the risk of cracking increases.
I think the number of turns to take off the cap is related to this issue. In the first generation, Jinhao's X159 cap had 3 complete rotations to take off the cap, and they reduced it to just two and a quarter in the second generation. If the plastic and threads had been a higher quality, they could reduce the number of turns to one, just like they have on the Jinhao 992.

Another drawback that is true for all the Jinhao's tested is the converter. It is a plus the fountain pen comes with a converter at this price, but they don't work very well in my experience. I don't know why converters that are provided by Jinhao don't allow the ink to flow correctly. The surface tension is high, and pockets of air are formed inside that in the end starve the pen of ink. This never happens in a cartridge. It could be some residue from the manufacturing process that creates this. For me is not a big deal as I like cartridges more than converters, but it kinda makes the free converter not that useful. I will fiddle a little more with them to see if a good clean solves the problem, or adding an agitator is the only solution.

Conclusion

 

The only reason I bought the pen was for it's number 8 nib, and my curiosity for how does such a large nib feel and compare to the usual #5 or #6. But after seeing the pen in person and using it for a little over a month I can confidently recommend the pen to you. It is not a perfect pen and, it will not be a Montblanc replacement, but it is a very good fountain pen. It writes well out of the box, it looks very good, it doesn't feel cheap (most of the times), it has a "unique" large nib (most pens come with a much smaller nib), and it is very affordable. It is a pen I would recommend to everyone. Give it a try.

The pen sits comfortable in my small hands, and it is a delight to write with it.

I might try other colors in the future, the blue is gorgeous and I expect the rest of the colors will be interesting as well.

Update: September 2024, the pen is no longer limited to extra fine and fine nibs, now you can get it with a medium as well. One of the negative points was removed. It is very nice to see that Jinhao is widening the range of nibs for the pen. Especially for such a large pen I feel a medium is a nice addition. Maybe even a broad?! Finger's crossed

Another point I would like to make is the fact the pen has survived despite my concerns with the thin plastic in the thread area. It has been used with no issues up to this point, more than a year from the moment of the initial review.

Fast note taking

Writing with a pen and on a piece of paper is an ability learned at a young age, even though nowadays I think most kids know how to type on a phone before they learn to write by hand.

I do enjoy the speed with which I type, the legibility remains constant even if I type faster, and not to mention the autocorrect feature, which is truly amazing. But writing with a pen is very satisfying. Choosing beautiful writing instruments, is another perk of writing by hand. I am not saying that there are no nice keyboards, custom-made or prebuilt, because there are a lot of them, but that is a subject for another time.

If you have a bit of proficiency using a computer, you will be able to write a lot faster compared to a pen. For starters, you just have to press a key for the computer to register the letter and second you can use all your fingers to press keys really fast, while when you write with a pen you have to create each letter one after the other. There is a caveat though, if for example you are taking notes, and they are graphs or drawings / sketches involved you will probably be able to make them faster the old-fashioned way (or you can use a tablet and a stylus and a keyboard for the plain text)

The most common question among typists is, how fast can you type?  There are dedicated sites where you can practice typing, and also you can compete. 

Starting from this idea, I am curious to know: How fast can I write?. And not only this, but also how will the writing instrument influence the speed with which I am writing by hand.

For this test I took a small text sample as I didn't want to get hand cramps and RSI from all the writing needed. I started with typing to have a reference, as I imagine it will be a lot faster than writing by hand. First time typing, I got 71 words per minute, a total of 14 seconds to type the sentence.

Then I started testing writing instruments. For the test I chose a: fountain pen, pencil, ball point, ink roller, gel pen. I want to see if some writing instruments are slower than others. For example, ball points usually feel slow. I feel each time that they are "sticky", I definitely feel slowed down by the majority of ball points. But that is just a feeling, I wanted to quantify the feeling in seconds. Will a smooth fountain pen be faster?

First thing I noticed is the big difference when I compare typing to writing. If typing the text took me 14 seconds, the writing took me double the time. For a longer text, the difference will be notable.

On the first run, the fountain pen was the slowest but, it was the first time writing the text by hand. So obviously, practice makes perfect. I wrote the text several times with each of the instruments alternating them, and the best results and the worst were very close together.

After a little practice with the text, you can see the differences started to shrink, to just a couple of seconds between the fastest time and the worst time.

To reduce the influence of the order in which I use the pens and pencils and to reduce the impact of mistakes or brain freezes, I wrote the text 3 times and measured the total time needed to complete. Also, to keep the sample size down I did this with 2 different pens

So the fountain pens represented by Faber Castell Loom F nib and Jinhao 51A F nib. Three runs took me 1 min 27:48 seconds using the Faber Castell Loom while the Jinhao 51A took me 1 min 29:71 sec

 

After completing the runs with all the writing instruments, I came back to the Faber Castell Loom and managed a much better time of 1 min 22.94 seconds

 

This tells me that more testing and practice is needed to reach maximum efficiency writing the sentence down, but for the purpose of the test I think this is good enough. I will take in consideration the last run of the Faber Castell Loom as the reference for the fountain pen.

The second head-to-head testing included 2 popular ball points. To be honest, I expected the ballpoints to be the worst in this test. They feel slow, and offer a dragging / sticky sensation when writing. But they felt much better than I imagined, and the times were very, very good and consistent. 1 min 22 seconds for both the Bic Round Stick M and the Parker Urban Premium. I am not saying that Parker Urban is a very popular ball point, but rather that Parker refills are very popular and used by a lot of people.

 

Next were the rollers (ink/gel pens). For this category I chose a Staedtler cool roller with red ink and a generic gel pen Forster. Both were admirable in the speed event, and also they offered very nice feedback, especially the Staedtler cool roller. The Staedtler completed the writing sample in 1 min 15:45 sec while the Forster needed 1 min 18:97 seconds.

 

The last category included 2 mechanical pencils, a Rotring 500 0,7 mm and a Kuru Toga 0,7 mm. Both pencils offered very nice feedback with a great smooth writing. The Rotring completed the run in 1 min 20:79 seconds, while the Kuru Toga needed 1 min 22:38 seconds.

Even though the times between all the writing instruments were very close, they still offered some surprises to me. I expected the pencils and fountain pens to battle for the first place, but instead the ink roller was the fastest in this small sample pool.
From the bunch, I expected the ball point to be the worst performer, feel wise and speed wise. The parker refills are great, smooth and with good flow, but then again so was the Bic Round Stic M which performed admirably for such an inexpensive pen.

The winners of the speed test are, (individual results)

Staedtler roller cool                      1 min 15 sec  (1st place)    - 25 sec/sentence
Forster gel pen                              1 min 18 sec (2nd place)    - 26 sec/sentence
Rotring 500 mechanical pencil     1 min 20 sec  (3rd place)    - 26.7 sec/sentence

 

The winners of the speed test are, (team results)

Rollers                                            1 min 16.5 sec (1st place)  - 25.5 sec/sentence
Pencils                                            1 min 21.6 sec (2nd place) - 27.2 sec/sentence
Ball Point Pens                               1 min 22.5 sec (3rd place) - 27.5 sec/sentence
Fountain pen                                   1 min 22.9 sec (4th place) - 27.6 sec/sentence

I took the best time of the fountain pen 1:22:9 because after a few more runs I managed to get under 1:20 sec with both fountain pens managing a 1:13 time with the Faber Castell and a 1:18 sec with Jinhao, without sacrificing much legibility. I didn't take these times in the consideration, as I think I offered more practice to the fountain pen compared to the rest of the pens and pencils.

Conclusion:

The instrument used doesn't offer a significant speed benefit (except the computer), but all the instruments offer very different writing experiences. Which one you chose is up to you.

Practice and what you regularly use for writing will influence the speed of your writing more than anything else.

If you need to write fast, like note-taking during a class, use a pen, pencil or fountain pen that offers good feedback. Too smooth, and you will lose a lot of legibility, too rough, and it will not be pleasant to use. The Goldilocks is a combination between the paper and pen used, but I find mechanical pencils too be quite good at offering the best of both. Their performance is offered by the lead, which is not specific to the pencil you use. In contrast, the fountain pen's nib will influence the writing experience much more than the ink that is in it.

And if you need to write really fast and keep legibility just use a computer, it is going to be twice as fast as the more traditional way of writing, at least. Of course this is valid for general writing, because if you need to add graphs, drawings, mathematical equations the traditional way of taking notes will probably outpace the computer and keyboard.