It's here! TWSBI 530 Diamond review

Time for a super quick review. (I'll take some photos and upload them soon, promise!)

Mine arrived today and is fitted with a medium nib. The nib is a steel nib, and is (to my mind) as good as the nibs on my Lamy Al-Stars or Safaris.

Some people on Fountain Pen Network have even swapped it's nib succesfully for the nib from a Pelikan M400. Apparently this turns this pen into a pen "as good as" a FAR FAR more expensive pen. And apparently you can even fit a vintage #5 nib if you wanted to.

Size wise, it's more or less identical in size to my Pelikan Souverän M800, but much lighter in the hand as it does not have the brass internals of the M800.

It has a lovely "faceted" shape to the body of the pen, making the ink in the fill chamber sparkle like a jewel in daylight (especially if you have it filled with a nice bright ink!).

Feels really nice in the hand too when writing, unless you post the cap on the end of the pen at which point it becomes a bit too top heavy for my liking.



Pros:

• Superb value for money, especially for a transparent piston fill "demonstrator"
• Watching the ink move around in the fill chamber is rather hypnotic - especially if you fill it with a nice bright ink!
• Cheap!
• Writes better than you'd expect a pen would at this price.
• Can be completely disassembled for cleaning or repair. Even comes with a wrench and bottle of sillicone grease for the piston!
• Easy to change the nib for a different nib to make is smoother writing if you want.

Cons:

• Posting the cap makes the pen feel rather top heavy
• Has had problems with leaky pistons in the past. Mine has the 1.5 piston and apparently the problem is cured with that piston.
• All plastic internals don't exactly look "pretty"- but there will be a new model coming out in 2011(we hope) with anodised aluminium internals in a range of colours to replace the black plastic internals in this one.

Conclusion:
BUY ONE. It's a SUPERB pen for the money. If it had "Pelikan" on the cap it would sell for many times this price!

UK and EU based readers can get one from The Writing Desk, while readers from elsewhere can pick one up from the official TWSBI shop on ebay. (I have no affiliation with either, I'm just a happy customer of both stores and pleased to recommend both).