Here’s what I call my “banana pen”!

One might easily consider this the Metro’s baby brother. Made of plastic and available in pastel-and-white or solid colour-and-dark grey, it is obviously aimed at children, with an ergonomic hexagonal shape, holes in the cap (so breathing is possible even if accidentally swallowed) and a really durable nib. There’s a roll-stop to prevent it falling off a (school-)table and it uses a snap cap. It’s also incredibly light: 12g capped and 8.5g uncapped!

Even better, it takes the CON-70, which the Metro (and even the resin Falcon) can’t handle. 1.1ml of ink is a huge amount for this Japanese fine nib, which, due to the way the cap is designed, doesn’t dry out even when left alone for weeks.

The nib is in fact swappable across all of Pilot’s entry-level pens: just grab the nib and feed and pull gently to pop it out of the section. After doing so, one might wish to swap in an EF from a Penmanship or a stub from a Prera. I bought mine in F, though, which is my preferable size for this pen. Being this light, I experience no fatigue at all even when writing for long periods, plus I don’t have to worry about running out of ink, since I check the converter every few days.

The funny thing about how good Pilot’s feeds are is that it will wick every possible bit of ink from the converter and then simply stop writing. But in the meantime, the nib punches way above its price point, and other makers’ £100+ steel nibs don’t come anywhere close to matching Pilot’s astounding QC. (I’m looking at you, Visconti.)

With this entry, the two entry-level pens by Pilot have been covered, and this completes my starter-pen rainbow: