Sailor HighAce Neo Beginner's Fountain Pen - Steel Nib - Fine - Red Body

The fineness of the nib is just about perfect for me; my non-fountain pens are usually Uniball Micro 0.5mm, and this writes just about exactly like that, only smoother. (I find my Lamy EF nib to be wonderful, but a bit too broad for anything but prose; it's too broad for math or notes.) The tines seems pretty well aligned and I haven't felt much scratchiness, despite the fineness of the nib. I have Noodler's #41 Brown in it, and so far so good.

The pen does feel incredibly light. Posting the cap, which is the only reasonably hefty-feeling part of this pen, leaves it reasonably well balanced.

A truly fine line! This is a spectacular nib for drawing, loaded with a Sailor Nano ink cartridge. Runs tiny circles around my Lamy Vista EF...

The only faults I can find are that the pen feels fairly cheap overall for the price (seems more like it should be about $8-10, really), with slightly misaligned cosmetic trim on the cap that doesn't seem to affect performance or comfort in any way. The grip area can become slippery if your hand environment is on the moist side, but as the pen is so light, it's not likely to tumble out of your grip. Lastly, the red plastic is fairly dull compared to the photo, like Evil-Superman's cape in Superman III.

A little pricey at first, but the twinge evaporates the more you play with that superb line.

Excellent pen, especially for the price. It's not flashy, but the nib is great- a very smooth, consistent fine line. The plastic is a bit lightweight, but the pen's well-balanced and comfortable to hold and the light weight makes it possible to write for a long time without fatigue.

Works with Sailor cartridges (I like the Clear Candy Reddish Brown, a beautiful coppery color) or converter (I have used both Private Reserve and Rohrer and Klingner inks from a bottle with absolutely no problems).

Compared to the Ohto F-Spirit that I purchased at the same time for the same price, the Sailor is definitely the superior pen. The F-Spirit's metal body has a nice design and a good weight to it, but I have experienced a lot of skipping and hard starts when writing (having tried several different Kaweco inks from cartridge and the same bottled inks that have worked well in te Neo) compared to none of those problems with the Sailor HighAce Neo.

I have already ordered a second HighAce Neo in blue and am looking forward to it.

This is actually my second HighAce Neo. Real "F," tip and suitable for narrow-rule paper or smaller. Expect a true fine line.

Fantastic fountain pen for the price! It's a smooth writer plus the cap posts on the barrel end with a secure "click." That's a nice design touch on a relatively inexpensive fountain pen.