Review: a pen I have used almost nonstop in 2024

plus: papyrus

This is the Pineider Avatar Twin Tank Touchdown.

I know, the name. I KNOW. We’ll get to that.

I’ve talked about this pen twice tangentially, but it deserves a real review. I’ve used it almost constantly since getting it as a gift last Christmas—as the ink spatters and grimy cap indicate, it is in use right now. It is my most-used pen of 2024 by a very wide margin.

Here’s the good and the bad of it.

Good: huge ink capacity, goes SLOSH SLOSH

If you ignore the vacuum filler and just fill it up with an ink syringe (more on that in a second), this thing holds an insane amount of ink; I have started to travel with just this pen because of this. Also I have the clear one, so when I move the pen around the ink goes SLOSH SLOSH and that is fun.

Bad: the vacuum filler, if you care

The best thing I can say about this pen’s vacuum filler is that it is wildly inconsistent. (Here’s a vacuum filler explanation, if you need it.) After a lot of effort I still cannot figure it out why sometimes it fills a lot and sometimes very little. By contrast, the Narwhal Original I have—which works the same way, but costs way less—took like two tries to figure out.

But also: I just fill it with an ink syringe because it’s easier, less messy, and works better to jam the barrel all the way full of ink. So I don’t really care about the filling mechanism, but you might and that’s fair.

Good: a button to fiddle with when you’re in a boring meeting

There is a little spring-loaded button on the end that you use to engage the shutoff valve between the tank and the nib. Like any pen with this feature, you need to open this up to let the ink flow, but the use of a spring-loaded button instead of a threaded cap makes this more fun. It also lets you pump ink into the nib if it gets really dry just by pushing the button.

And yes: if you play with it too much and pull the plunger out too far it will shoot ink out of the nib, but that’s an even better way to get out of a boring meeting. OH HEY, GARETH? SO SORRY TO INTERRUPT THIS NEVER-ENDING MEETING ABOUT YOUR PROJECT DELIVERABLES THAT DO NOT IMPACT ME AT ALL, BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT: I’M COVERED IN INK. I’LL BE BACK IN TWENTY MINUTES, PROBABLY STILL COVERED IN INK. NO, PLEASE KEEP GOING, I’VE GOT THE HIGH NOTES.

Bad: it leaks if you get lazy/overly ambitious on cleaning it

This was the pen that exploded on a plane. Read about that here:

Your fountain pen exploded on a plane: now what?

Good: grip/nib/cap

Good news if you are wary of Pineiders, as this does not have some of the issues my other Pineiders do. For example, my Pineider Tempi Moderni (reviewed here) is a pen I generally really like, but the magnetic cap feels uncomfortably loose at times. The Avatars—which are also magnetic-cap pens—do not have this problem and the cap is really secure, especially on the Twin Tank Touchdown.

As to the grip and nib: I have two Avatars, this clear vacuum-filler and a matte black standard Avatar (the “standard” Avatar is a cartridge/converter pen). Here’s the front bit of them, side-by-side:

The black one has a pronounced ski-slope grip that I find tricky to use; it just gets too skinny at its narrowest point. I can use it, but it takes me a while to adjust if I haven’t used the pen for a bit. By contrast, I can pick up the Twin Tank Touchdown at any time because it has a regular grip-shaped grip, satisfying one of my core requests of pen manufacturers: HAVE A REGULAR GRIP-SHAPED GRIP.

More importantly, though, you might notice that the matte black Avatar’s nib is not black metal, but a black coating. This is a very cool look! I believe it is also is the only nib I have ever returned! It just wrote awful out of the box and I got another one, which had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM.

Then I took it apart and discovered why: the coating was stuck between the tines.

Hours of very meticulous work with a brass shim and a razor cleaned this up and now this nib works like it should—it was tricky to remove the junk between the tines without damaging the rest of the finish—but like, come on. I’m fine with some adjusting and maintenance but that is ridiculous.

(Anyway, the Twin Tank Touchdown just has a plain metal nib and it has always worked great.)

Bad: why is it named after Avatar

Pineider names their pens after movies. This one is named after AVATAR.

THE MOVIE WITH PAPYRUS AS THE FONT.

WHY? WHYYYY?

THERE ARE SO MANY COOL ITALIAN MOVIE NAMES: TENEBRAE, DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA, OTHERS THAT ARE NOT DARIO ARGENTO FILMS BUT YOU GET THE IDEA JUST PICK ONE OF THOSE.

Good: looks cool but not so expensive/fancy that you worry about it

Finally, I like that this pen looks cool but does not fall into the trap of being so fancy/expensive that I am reluctant to use it in the wild. Like, I love this Montegrappa and this Ryan Krusac and this weird bog oak thing but they are mostly use-at-home pens because of their finish or materials. This manages to pull off looking interesting despite being a pretty simple design of plastic or resin or whatever and the worst-case scenario is that it gets scratched up—and I feel pretty good about being able to buff that out with jewelry rouge since there’s no design or pattern to deal with. This means that it’s not only a good daily writer/briefcase pen, but one that travels well, too.

Conclusion

To wrap it up: hey guys, sorry about all the yelling! Shouting aside, this pen hits all the right notes for me. It’s incredibly useful, durable, and comfortable.

And we’ve been on a journey together: it came with too much silicone grease in the barrel, I fixed it, it exploded on a plane because that was load-bearing grease, I added more grease and then took it on another plane because I was like HEY FATE, TRY ME and it worked out. I don’t know if that was my fault or the pen’s fault (and if so, if all the pens have that issue or not), but at any rate we’ve reached an agreement where I will regularly feed it silicone grease and it will not explode on me, and with that I’ve been really happy with it.