Zebra V-301 Fountain Pen - Medium Nib - Black Body

This pen feels and looks really cheap, and it uses proprietary ink cartridges that only come in watery blue and black. There's no converter available, and it's not a candidate for ED conversion because of the metal body and gigantic hole at the end. Like many others here, I have trouble getting it to write properly.

i grabbed this on a quick office supply run at my local drug store and seeing that it was 3 bucks i thought i'd give it a try. typical zebra look which I like, cap posts with a solid click with no rattling. I had a slight problem getting the ink cartridge to go in all the way at first but once it was in there stayed in with no problem. my only criticism is that it skips rather often and is pretty unforgiving as far as to the position you have to hold it in to write with it, pretty much the same way every time, even if the surface youre writing on is flat. also, its pretty scratchy to write with, which annoys me as I'm really a scribbler and don't like having resistance when I write (you might). that being said, when it does work it lays a nice line and the ink is a nice black. for 3 bucks its a pretty decent fountain pen.

Like the other I have a hard time keeping the ink flowing. I think the air passage is too small.

If you can get it to write, it writes great. Smooth, wet, etc. But as soon as you stop for any longer than about two seconds, the nib is dry and it takes five minutes of shaking, fiddling, and pressing the nib every which way to get the ink flowing again. This would be a great pen if it would allow me to stop and think for a moment before starting on the next paragraph.

I see one glowing review here, but my experience is different. I loaded my pen with one of the supplied cartridges, and it just won't write. I left it nib-down overnight, hoping it would help ink flow, but it's still not working. A pen that puts ink on the page less than 25% of the time isn't much of a pen. This is a shame, since I enjoy several of Zebra's other products.