Review: good $15 fountain pen, includes two cats

plus: a chest tattoo that is also of your name

This is the Hong Dian M2.

The M2 is a pocket fountain pen. It’s made of aluminum and is most comparable to a Kaweco AL Sport (the aluminum one); it has similar overall dimensions to the Kaweco Sport but is pretty much its own pen beyond that.

In fact, if you told me that the M2 was designed by giving a focus group a Kaweco AL Sport, asking them what they didn’t like about it, and then trying to fix those problems, I’d be like “sure, that tracks.”

Some of those fixes work; some not so much. Let’s review!

Mixed bag: clip and converter

The Kaweco Sport does not come with a clip or a converter. You have to buy those things separately; I did, and ehhhhhhhhhh.

The converter, for example, is this little push-pull thing.

Cute! Also, I find it hard to use.

When I read the overwhelmingly positive reviews of this thing on JetPens I think “wow, maybe I am an idiot,” but then I remember “no, I am a genius, everyone else is wrong.” Anyway: now I just fill mine up with an ink syringe.

You also have to buy the Kaweco’s clip separately; it slides on the pen and is, like, a clip. I don’t know where my clip is because I thought it was bleh and haven’t used it in forever, so here’s a picture I drew of it from memory.

The M2, on the other hand, comes with an integrated clip and a mini-twist converter. The converter works exactly like every other converter you have ever used.

It’s basically the same size as the Kaweco mini-converter, it’s just way easier to use.

The M2’s clip is strong and spring-loaded.

The mini-twist converter is a huge improvement over the push-pull Kaweco mini-converter; the integrated clip is kind of a negative for me.

That is, the clip works great as a clip. So clippy! Nice! But when you post the cap on the back of the pen to write—which is kind of an important thing for a small pocket pen—the heavy-duty clip throws off the balance of the pen, and I found I ended up fighting the pen more than I’d like.

So: mixed bag, but it’s nice that you don’t have to pay extra for them.

Improvement, maybe: big feed

The feed is that plastic or ebonite thing in a fountain pen’s nib unit that helps regulate ink flow. This is what that looks like on a Kaweco Sport.

Look, this is probably fine. But I’ve got a 2.3mm calligraphy nib on a Kaweco Sport—WHICH KAWECO SELLS, IT’S NOT SOME WEIRD THING I DID—and sometimes I have to wet the nib between individual letters because the feed can’t keep up with the amount of ink flow needed for that nib.

Here’s a GIF of me trying and failing to recreate that issue for this post, yay thanks so much for working like a boss the ONE TIME I WANTED YOU TO FAIL super cool.

Moving on: here’s the feed on a M2.

Here they are side by side.

Much bigger! Bigger is better (I assume because I am American)! Anyway, the M2’s nib puts down a silly amount of ink at a time; I got a “soft F” (more on that below) and you can push the flex on it pretty hard with the feed keeping up. Improvement, maybe!

Improvement: very good nib

One complaint I hear about Kaweco Sports, mainly from comments on this blog (hi guys), is about their nibs. I’ve been pretty lucky that all of mine have worked well, but fair enough. So, for purposes of this let’s just split the difference and assume the Kaweco’s nibs are, like, fine.

The M2’s nib is VERY GOOD. Part of the reason I bought this pen was that I got a Hong Dian in a Truphae subscription box a couple years ago—it was a bonus pen thrown in with a nicer pen—and despite initially being like “what is this nonsense” I ended up being super impressed with how clean and smoothly it wrote. I wanted to see if that was luck.

If it was luck, I got lucky twice. I got a “soft fine” nib, which is I guess a way of saying “semi-flex nib,” and it’s a solid writer. It has some good spring for regular writing and can put out some serious line variation with pressure.

Also, it’s a black nib that actually writes, which is surprisingly less common than you’d think. Improvement!

Major improvement: cats

Finally, and probably most importantly for an online hobby blog about pens, the Kaweco Sport comes with ZERO CATS.

ZERO. NOT ONE.

That’s right: there are no cats anywhere on this pen. I will give you a little time to process that.

Worse, it’s not like they didn’t have room; the cap of the Kaweco Sport says “Kaweco” on it in two different places. It’s like wearing one of those necklaces with your name on it on top of a chest tattoo that is also of your name. WE GET IT, DENISE.

The M2, by contrast, surprised me with TWO free cats on the cap finial. See:

I like that they are hugging. Improvement!

In conclusion

This is a good little pen. It’s new, so we’ll see how the finish holds up, but the other Hong Dian I have is a couple years old and hasn’t had any issues so I feel pretty good about it.

I got mine for $15 from Amazon on Prime Day, and they’re around $20 normally—which is about 1/3 the price of a Kaweco AL Sport before you add on the cost of buying the separate converter and clip. If the M2’s styling is not your issue, you can check out the M1, which has a rounded "submarine” shape and a smiley face on it for some reason.

That said, is this a Kaweco-killer? No—or not for me, at least.

While most of these features improve on legitimately annoying problems with the Sport, the M2’s big clip throwing off the balance of the pen does limit the number of positions I can write in. If I’m sitting at my desk, fine, but otherwise I end up fighting the pen after a few lines—and if I’m sitting at my desk, I don’t need to be using a pocket pen in the first place. So while I like this pen and think it is a very good value for the price, I do find it a bit less useful than, and unlikely to replace, my standby—which is, somehow, the abomination stonewashed denim Kaweco Sport.