What do you get for your money? That’s the question everyone looking to buy a piece of tech asks themselves. It also happens to be the question this recurring feature will try to answer. Is it worth spending extra on high-end gear, or do you get what you need with cheaper models? Every month, we’ll look at some of the cheapest and most expensive products in a given category, testing each to see what their limits are and help you figure out when you can cheap it out, and when to plunk down some extra cash to get what you need.

Hi/Low: Fountain Pens

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but choosing the right one can still be painful. Not only do you have a daunting number of styles to choose from, there are also things like the nib, ink, and other variables to consider. Even when you narrow down the field to just fountain pens, there are a bewildering number of choices available, ranging from cheap and cheerful to stupidly expensive status symbols that cost more than a small car. So is there a noticeable difference between the two?

I decided to find out by trying a $25 Lamy Vista and a moderately expensive ($125) Delta Serena. After filling both with high-quality ink (Noodler’s Heart of Darkness), I set out to write my memoirs using both pens. Many pages later, I was familiar with both pens and how it feels to write many pages of invective ranting with them.

This is the first time I’ve used a fountain pen for several years, and I had forgotten how nice the feel and scratch-scratch noise of a pen on paper can be. Writing by hand should be a pleasurable experience, and a decent fountain pen enhances this, with a well-balanced weight and a nib that glides smoothly over the paper. However, I am also old enough that I was taught to write with a fountain pen, an education that many younger writers won’t have. It takes practice: writing with a fountain pen is very different to using a ballpoint or gel pen as you have to be more in control of the angle and stroke of the nib on the page. There are plenty of great guides to learning the proper technique, but I would particularly recommend the handwriting and fountain pen sections of Reddit, both of which are populated by helpful pen enthusiasts.

A Pen in the Hand

Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Although they are quite similar in design, the two pens feel quite different in the hand. The Lamy Vista is unapologetically plastic, from the clear plastic exterior to the clip on the lid. That’s not a bad thing. The plastic feels comfortable in the hand. The long neck of the pen—the part behind the nib that you hold—has two indented sections that the thumb and index finger naturally fall into. Similarly, the barrel—the part that fits over the ink cartridge—has two flat sides that stop the pen from rolling around on a desk top. All of these parts are made of clear ABS plastic: The only metal parts are the nib and the paperclip-styled top. However well-styled the plastic is, it still feels like plastic, and I found my grip on the pen did get slightly slippery when writing on hot and humid days. In the rush to get down a particularly well-crafted insult on paper, I did find the pen slipping slightly sometimes.

The Delta Serena, by contrast, is more of a classic fountain pen. It has a heavier, more solid construction than the Lamy, and feels more substantial. Delta claims that each pen is hand-carved from a solid block of resin, and it certainly feels like a precision instrument in the hand, with a better balance (the weight is centered in the middle) that makes it easier to hold for longer periods. There are no indentations on the neck, though, so you have to check your grip on the narrow neck and make sure the nib is flat against the paper before you start writing. The narrow neck also encourages a lighter grip, which makes for more fluid writing. There are a lot of nice design touches that make it feel classier than the Lamy, including a screw-on lid and top (so it won’t pop off accidentally) and a much stronger seal in the cover of the ink reservoir: when the lid is on and screwed down, it feels like you’d have to crush most of the pen before it leaked.

Ink on the Page

The Lamy uses standard ink cartridges, but a cheap converter is available that adds a piston draw ink reservoir. The Delta Serena comes with an included piston reservoir, but can also use cartridges if you prefer. Both models are easy to fill: Remove the end of the pen, dunk the nib in the ink and turn the screw top on the reservoir to lift the piston and suck it up.

Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

I tried both pens with a fine tip nib, but they are available in other sizes too. That’s one of the joys of fountain pens: if you don’t like the stroke of the pen, you can swap the nib out, or even (god forbid) replace it with a ballpoint mechanism. The nibs are proprietary to the manufacturer, but there is an active market in third party nibs and parts. Both pens had a similar nib size, but the Delta produced a somewhat heavier stroke with more ink, which does mean that I tended to write faster. The Lamy produced a thinner, lighter line with the same speed and pressure.

These two pens show different approaches to designing a fountain pen. The Lamy Vista is about simplicity, about making a pen that is as cheap, robust and simple as possible. It’s a fountain pen for students and those who write a lot, but don’t want to spend much. The Delta Serena is a pen for the more classic fountain pen user, the one who cares more about the refined touches that make a fountain pen unique.

Why Bother With a Fountain Pen?

Cynics will dismiss using a fountain pen these days as a needless hipsterism, a tacky bit of retro nostalgia that serves no real purpose. I disagree. A good fountain pen is a piece of precision engineering and design, and will serve you well for many years. Using a fountain pen is about making a deliberate choice to buy something that you can use repeatedly, rather than something you use once and loose. If you want to write casually, get a Bic disposable and throw it away when you’re done. But if you want to have something that looks cool and is a pleasure to use, get a fountain pen.

However, there are limits. Expensive fountain pens can be more about status than usability. If I spent $935 on a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 90 Years 149, I’d be afraid to take it out of the house. For me, the Delta Serena is the best pick here: it looks great, feels great and writes well, with a more comfortable and smooth writing experience than the Lamy. I’d be sad if I lost it, but at $110, I wouldn’t feel like I had lost a family heirloom.