Helix Oxford Premium Fountain Pen (Dark Blue) with Plastic Free Packaging

This is the best I’ve gotten from 5 pounds!The pen is perfectly balanced. The nib has just the right stiffness. The ink flow is perfect for a medium nib. I avoid buying resin/plastic bodies and caps because they always break. The stainless stainless barrel and cap of this pen holds up for that too.I have had a few Mont Blanc pens which had all proven to be high maintenance and unreliable. The one in the picture was around 630 pounds to buy with 130 pounds worth of repairs done to date and all I’ve used it for is signatures. The only resin bit of the pen is now cracked after it was changed a few years ago. So much for lasting a lifetime! You can also see the difference in ink flow in the picture with the MB bloating the paper with ink.So I decided to try some cheaper ones and Oxford came up as the cheapest option on Amazon search for fountain pens. I was transported to my childhood when the Oxford brand meant cheap and best. I was delighted to see that they haven’t changed.It doesn’t look or feel as great as the Mont Blanc, but it writes better. And even if it only lasted a month, its still 2 years ahead of the MB pen in terms of cost of ownership.

Although it's hard to tell from product photos on websites, this looked like it might be a relatively high quality pen for such a low price, and I wasn't disappointed when it arrived. The pen is predominantly metal (no cheap plastic barrel or lid), quite chunky and fairly heavy - great for people with larger hands and/or larger writing (I have medium sized hands and try to keep my writing small, and it's still great).I have only been using it for a few days, but so far I have found that the ink flows very smoothly, especially if you don't press the nib down too hard, and there have been no leaks. After reading someone else's review, I did make sure that I fitted the cartridge firmly, which is always a good idea anyway.Seriously, for the price you pay, this has to be one of the best quality lower-priced fountain pens around, and having used a lower quality pen with a scratchy nib, this has given me back the joy of writing with a fountain pen.

For such a cheap fountain pen, this writes absolutely lovely. Very smooth and much better than the Parker equivalent (Vector) which I’ve always found a tiny bit scratchy on the paper. However, on the down side it does seem a little bit generous with its ink distribution. So much so that even pulling the lid off (which is quite stiff to remove) a tad too vigorously will cause tiny little flecks of ink to spatter across whatever is in the local area, which remain largely unnoticed until you smear the side of your hand through them and steak them across the page. It also drips ink out when putting the lid back on, resulting in an increasing amount of ink swilling around in there, which inevitably also ends up on your hands when you remove the lid and grip the pen to write. The leak problem is a shame because it’s a very nicely balanced pen and writes great. Maybe it’s just me when I’m in a hurry! I’ll see if I can practice removing the lid a little less aggressively in future...Overall it’s a great pen if you’re willing to treat it like a delicate little flower and handle it extremely gently at all times.

Pluses for this pen - it takes standard cartridge sizes, so it's easy to source replacement ink for it (unlike quite a lot of other fountain pens on the market)Minuses for this pen - It seems to lack consistent ink flow, and that makes it really frustrating to use as it quite often seems to leave gaps while writing or drawing with it.It's a real shame because the pen body feels beautifully made and has a bit of weight to it unlike cheaper pens, so it's easy to hold and comfortable. Just a durned shame about the ink flow.

It's not a bad pen. Everyone should give one a go. Writing with a fountain pen really shows up bad writing and style, and forced me to write slower and more accurately.The stainless steel version is not that easy to hold though, slips in the fingers sometimes, takes time to get used to it. Maybe it's not the same for the colour versions.As a leftie though, I see lots of smudging and smearing, as I write across the page. Maybe fountain pens are just not for lefties.I still use it, just not for every day writing and just have to concede to the fact it will smear before drying. It does dry relatively fast though. Wouldn't be a problem for a rightie.