My dad got this for me for Christmas a few years ago, but I didn't use it until this year when I started getting more interested in pens. I've handled a couple of really expensive pens at expos and shows, but this is no joke one of the easiest and smoothest writers I've had.
Just wrote up a review type thing to supplement Nick's review. The summary of my ugly for the pen is that the less is talked of the wrench that comes with the ECO the better. Doing so might give people the impression that the ECO comes with a wrench and not a wrench shaped object.
I've been using fountain pens for more that 60 years, so the Eco is not just for beginners. It's not my only pen because I have the same addiction problem that I have with knives, firearms and watches. The Eco is pretty much bulletproof but won't stand up to a truck assault. It writes every time, doesn't leak and holds a lot of ink. I did not buy the white one. I figured that if it's going to look like a toy, I might as well make it look like a Kawasaki, so my Eco is lime green. I never post it for writing, so back weight is not an issue and it is not clumsy as the ballpointers might believe. I have "better" pens but the Eco spends a lot of time with me, partly because I don't feel the need to worry about it. I no longer care about impressing anyone. Thanks for the fair and honest review.
Great review. This pen is the same one I have( only I have the Blue transparent). I got Pilots, Mont Blanc, Lamy, and even Cross pens. So I'm not really a noob when it comes to fountain pens. That being said, I can honestly say that if this was my very first brand and fountain pen before I started buying pens, I would not have bought any other brand. Twsbi pens are absolutely beautiful pens with amazing quality for their prices. I love the way they write and I love the fact that they include the Piston and or Vac system with the pens for lower than any other brand out there. ANOTHER huge thing about this pen that you forgot to mention is the fact that their Warranty has no end date. Unlike Mont blanc and others, Twsbi doesn't stop with 1 0r 2 year warranty. They have a life time warranty! Easily the best purchase of a fountain pen I have ever made. Just mad it took me this long to discover them. I could have saved a lot of money not buying Mont blanc, Cross, Pilots, and others.
Unless that piston mechanism is really loose you shouldn't have to worry about the knob getting turned by accident. I have the piston fillers and have carried the clipped to a cord around my neck and, even with all the jostling they get there, I've never had a problem with the knob turning. :)
I carry pens in my pocket and I'm constantly bending up and down as a barista in the mornings and I worry it'll leak because of it not able to lock at the end
After about a year of almost daily carry in the pen slip of a backpack, the cap on mine kind of crumbled where the clip mounts and made the pen unusable. Fantastic piece, don't expect the clip to last forever.
I love my TWSBI, they write phenomenally, they're balanced extremely well, ink flow is good. The only extreme downside to the ECO is that they BREAK! I've broken 4 of them so far. The plastic is extremely brittle, and if you press down while you write, the nib is pushed into the feed and will crack the feed. This doesn't take much force to occur. Amazon reviews show many people with this same issue. I switched to the Vac700 which has the nib mounted into a feed unit so it's far more solid and won't break. Wish TWSBI would make the ECO is a better plastic material rather than the vegetable plastic that they use. Would be nice if they still made the micarta version of this pen.
Surprised you didn't mention the dissasemblability - for a piston pen, this one is very easy to clean, due to it's design and the included wrench tool.
This is a pen I have a lot of thoughts and comments on, so... Here we go. I want to start by saying that I absolutely love this pen, so anything I have negative to say, it's not negative enough that I don't recommend you get this pen. The Pilot Metropolitan, Kaweco Sport, and the TWSBI ECO sort of cover all of the things you could possibly need in a fountain pen. Once you go beyond those you're buying pocket jewellery. That's okay though. For a lot of people that's the absolute point of a fountain pen. I have a Noodler's Neponset that is huge, ridiculous, fiddly, and I use it anytime I'm writing something special that I want to give some extra flair. So here we go with my cheap knockoff Good/Great/Bad/Ugly review of the TWSBI ECO Starting out, the good and great are pretty much already covered by Nick. QED On the bad side I just want to add that I don't think this is a good pen for EDC purposes. Of the three pens I listed this one is by far the least durable. Mine has a crack in the cap from when I dropped it getting it out of my bag to start taking notes at a meeting. It hasn't impacted its ability to do anything, but I worry about what would happen if it fell from a greater height. The metropolitan and the sport on the other hand are basically tanks that aren't actually overbuilt. The metro isn't going into your pocket everyday anytime soon (it's too heavy, the clip suuuucks, and I don't trust the cap not to come uncapped based on experience), but it can live in your bag and *never* be harmed. The sport on the other hand can go in your pocket and you never have to think about it again until you need to write something down. I don't trust this pen in that way. Now for the ugly. For most people this question will never come up. Me, I always mix inks that I'm using successively to make sure they don't create a horrible gel that would ruin my pen. A particular combination (a noodler's ink and a diamine ink) created a gel in my test cartridge so I went to clean out the pen super thoroughly to ensure nothing bad happened. I thought to myself "What a wonderful thing that TWSBI included a wrench so I could flush this thing out all the way!" Let me tell you now brothers and sisters that TWSBI has not included a wrench with the ECO. They have included a wrench shaped piece of garbage. It absolutely does not work at its job of slotting onto the thing its supposed to slot unto and then twisting. The forky prongs at the end of the wrench flex outwards easily, thus not twisting the thing. Final conclusions: This pen is still a gem, but keep in mind that it does have some problems. I hope you found this interesting and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
I've never had any problem with my Eco's wrench, it does its job flawlessly. Beside that, I absolutely agree your other point: this isn't a good EDC pen, unless you carry your pen in a pen pouch/case and are careful with it. I care about mine way too much (gift from my gf) to roughen it up, so I do have a Chinese clone to throw around when I'm out and about.
I absolutely love my diamond 580. Great review by the way. You nailed it on the targeted consumer base. The Eco is the most value for the price of anything else I found on the market. I'm a little bit old school in many ways. I do not pay my bills online I instead write checks still which makes me a dinosaur according to my kids. I like to add a security of a fountain pen because it's a lot harder for someone to forge a check.
I think it's always great when fountain pens are both good and affordable. Before coming across TWSBI, I was (honestly, still am) inclined to recommend Lamy Safari or Al Star as a starter (under $30), some good Pilot pens come in below that but my latest "discovery" (new to me) was Fountain Pen Revolution (Himalaya in this case): $29 or, for $3 more, a flex nib!
Aha, came here from the preppy review, great info as always. For the price only the piston risk concerns me but no way to know if that would be a real issue except trying one.
lol @ vape, dad. Im an undergrad and if I just have my eco out and capped on a table or something, I'm CONSTANTLY being asked by other students if my pen is a vape. That is until I uncap it and start writing with it.
Just got my Petrol Safari and some limited edition petrol ink the other day. Happy with it so far, but I've got more writing to do to form a final opinion. The only disappointment so far is the cheap feeling plastic for the $30 price.
Enclusion I agree that it's durable, but I just didn't know what to expect. It just felt lighter and more hollow than I thought a $30 pen might be. This is my first fountain pen btw
Kinda wanted it to be made from a nice nylon for the price instead of abs plastic. Spent my real first day with it and I'd say that I'm happy with it for sure.
I love this pen. I have two: one with a 1.1mm stub and the other has a reground nib for writing in Arabic from FPNibs. The mini is better for edc though. As for what you said about the materials, have you seen what Aurora charges for plastic barrels?
My TWSBI Eco leaked all the time. The ink would pour out where the nib fits in the rest of the pen. I tried refilling 7-8 times before it found the trash. So sad
Fountain pens now? Btw, gold nibbed Sailor fountain pens are the best. Try one out if you get the chance. I have all the fountain pens; TWSBI, Mont Blanc, Visconti, Pilot, Sheaffer, Parker, etc. etc. Sailors top them all. Also, don't worry about the plastic. It's all the same plastic, Acrylic/PMMA resin/Polymethylmethacrylate. Companies just like to give them fancy names. -Cough- Mont Blanc, precious resin -cough- same thing as this TWSBI -cough- ...
Oh dude, the fountain pen game is a bonkers rat race of wishing "I sure do wish I owned this pen." Pricing wise it's pretty similar to the knife game too. For less that $30 you can get a pen that probably is going to do everything you could possibly ever need. For around $60 you can get a pen that is going to do everything you could ever possibly need and also have some real niceties to it. For around $400 you can get a pen that is absolutely drool worthy. If you'd be interested in even more fountain pen stuff (DON'T DO IT YOU WILL GO BROKE IF YOU GET INTO THIS HOBBY), check out Gourmet Pens and Dr SBRE Brown. They're my two favorite reviewers and interestingly enough they are married to each other and have a show they do together called "Serious Nibbage"
Don't have a fountain pen... Looks like a good starter for a noob... The black one looks better and the packaging looks pretty cool too... Might make a nice gift...
My dad got this for me for Christmas a few years ago, but I didn't use it until this year when I started getting more interested in pens. I've handled a couple of really expensive pens at expos and shows, but this is no joke one of the easiest and smoothest writers I've had.
I have no idea how big this pen is without a Delica comparison.
Just what I was thinking.....
@Arturo Alfredo Definitely, I have been using flixzone for years myself :D
@Arturo Alfredo Definitely, have been using flixzone for years myself :)
@Arturo Alfredo Yup, I have been watching on flixzone for since november myself :D
Nick didn't talk about the fact that twsbi provides a wrench and silicone grease to take apart the Eco for cleaning and maintenance purposes
Just wrote up a review type thing to supplement Nick's review. The summary of my ugly for the pen is that the less is talked of the wrench that comes with the ECO the better. Doing so might give people the impression that the ECO comes with a wrench and not a wrench shaped object.
I've been using fountain pens for more that 60 years, so the Eco is not just for beginners. It's not my only pen because I have the same addiction problem that I have with knives, firearms and watches. The Eco is pretty much bulletproof but won't stand up to a truck assault. It writes every time, doesn't leak and holds a lot of ink. I did not buy the white one. I figured that if it's going to look like a toy, I might as well make it look like a Kawasaki, so my Eco is lime green. I never post it for writing, so back weight is not an issue and it is not clumsy as the ballpointers might believe. I have "better" pens but the Eco spends a lot of time with me, partly because I don't feel the need to worry about it. I no longer care about impressing anyone. Thanks for the fair and honest review.
Great review. This pen is the same one I have( only I have the Blue transparent). I got Pilots, Mont Blanc, Lamy, and even Cross pens. So I'm not really a noob when it comes to fountain pens. That being said, I can honestly say that if this was my very first brand and fountain pen before I started buying pens, I would not have bought any other brand. Twsbi pens are absolutely beautiful pens with amazing quality for their prices. I love the way they write and I love the fact that they include the Piston and or Vac system with the pens for lower than any other brand out there. ANOTHER huge thing about this pen that you forgot to mention is the fact that their Warranty has no end date. Unlike Mont blanc and others, Twsbi doesn't stop with 1 0r 2 year warranty. They have a life time warranty! Easily the best purchase of a fountain pen I have ever made. Just mad it took me this long to discover them. I could have saved a lot of money not buying Mont blanc, Cross, Pilots, and others.
Unless that piston mechanism is really loose you shouldn't have to worry about the knob getting turned by accident. I have the piston fillers and have carried the clipped to a cord around my neck and, even with all the jostling they get there, I've never had a problem with the knob turning. :)
I carry pens in my pocket and I'm constantly bending up and down as a barista in the mornings and I worry it'll leak because of it not able to lock at the end
LOL 9:25
Some Guy: "... is that a *vaporizer*?!"
Nick: "No, it's a Twizz-bee, bruh."
Is it ok to get into pens?
Yes, they won’t ruin your life like watches (they might ruin your bank account though)
After about a year of almost daily carry in the pen slip of a backpack, the cap on mine kind of crumbled where the clip mounts and made the pen unusable. Fantastic piece, don't expect the clip to last forever.
I love my TWSBI, they write phenomenally, they're balanced extremely well, ink flow is good. The only extreme downside to the ECO is that they BREAK! I've broken 4 of them so far. The plastic is extremely brittle, and if you press down while you write, the nib is pushed into the feed and will crack the feed. This doesn't take much force to occur. Amazon reviews show many people with this same issue. I switched to the Vac700 which has the nib mounted into a feed unit so it's far more solid and won't break. Wish TWSBI would make the ECO is a better plastic material rather than the vegetable plastic that they use. Would be nice if they still made the micarta version of this pen.
Surprised you didn't mention the dissasemblability - for a piston pen, this one is very easy to clean, due to it's design and the included wrench tool.
This is a pen I have a lot of thoughts and comments on, so... Here we go.
I want to start by saying that I absolutely love this pen, so anything I have negative to say, it's not negative enough that I don't recommend you get this pen. The Pilot Metropolitan, Kaweco Sport, and the TWSBI ECO sort of cover all of the things you could possibly need in a fountain pen. Once you go beyond those you're buying pocket jewellery. That's okay though. For a lot of people that's the absolute point of a fountain pen. I have a Noodler's Neponset that is huge, ridiculous, fiddly, and I use it anytime I'm writing something special that I want to give some extra flair. So here we go with my cheap knockoff Good/Great/Bad/Ugly review of the TWSBI ECO
Starting out, the good and great are pretty much already covered by Nick. QED
On the bad side I just want to add that I don't think this is a good pen for EDC purposes. Of the three pens I listed this one is by far the least durable. Mine has a crack in the cap from when I dropped it getting it out of my bag to start taking notes at a meeting. It hasn't impacted its ability to do anything, but I worry about what would happen if it fell from a greater height. The metropolitan and the sport on the other hand are basically tanks that aren't actually overbuilt. The metro isn't going into your pocket everyday anytime soon (it's too heavy, the clip suuuucks, and I don't trust the cap not to come uncapped based on experience), but it can live in your bag and *never* be harmed. The sport on the other hand can go in your pocket and you never have to think about it again until you need to write something down. I don't trust this pen in that way.
Now for the ugly. For most people this question will never come up. Me, I always mix inks that I'm using successively to make sure they don't create a horrible gel that would ruin my pen. A particular combination (a noodler's ink and a diamine ink) created a gel in my test cartridge so I went to clean out the pen super thoroughly to ensure nothing bad happened. I thought to myself "What a wonderful thing that TWSBI included a wrench so I could flush this thing out all the way!" Let me tell you now brothers and sisters that TWSBI has not included a wrench with the ECO. They have included a wrench shaped piece of garbage. It absolutely does not work at its job of slotting onto the thing its supposed to slot unto and then twisting. The forky prongs at the end of the wrench flex outwards easily, thus not twisting the thing.
Final conclusions: This pen is still a gem, but keep in mind that it does have some problems.
I hope you found this interesting and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
I've never had any problem with my Eco's wrench, it does its job flawlessly. Beside that, I absolutely agree your other point: this isn't a good EDC pen, unless you carry your pen in a pen pouch/case and are careful with it. I care about mine way too much (gift from my gf) to roughen it up, so I do have a Chinese clone to throw around when I'm out and about.
Travis W Rigg You should have contacted the seller or maker of the pen about the defect, instead of trying to defame the company like you're doing
I got one of these in blue, with a stub nib. Although this pen violates my design preferences, it is nevertheless a great pen to use. A gem.
What a beautiful review to wake up to!
I absolutely love my diamond 580. Great review by the way. You nailed it on the targeted consumer base. The Eco is the most value for the price of anything else I found on the market. I'm a little bit old school in many ways. I do not pay my bills online I instead write checks still which makes me a dinosaur according to my kids. I like to add a security of a fountain pen because it's a lot harder for someone to forge a check.
Damn I thought the white looks more classy than the black & clear hahaha ...really enjoyed the review, well made!
Holy crap, we've got a chilled-out Gilbert Gottfried doing pen reviews now????
Thanks for the heads up as it might be one to try.
Someone asked me if my twsbi eco was a vape too lol
I think it's always great when fountain pens are both good and affordable. Before coming across TWSBI, I was (honestly, still am) inclined to recommend Lamy Safari or Al Star as a starter (under $30), some good Pilot pens come in below that but my latest "discovery" (new to me) was Fountain Pen Revolution (Himalaya in this case): $29 or, for $3 more, a flex nib!
I think this pen would be awesome for a student, I find myself buying around 2 pens per month because they run out so quickly.
last time I was this early I, wait....I don't care about pens...
Really??? Did you not spew great praise on the FISHER SPACE PEN!!! You stand corrected... Good day sir! (and Madam)...
JS Krawz :D :D :D
You sold me
Nick you might like a Pelikan 200. Similar filling system but with interchangable nibs.
Hi Bryan, Just met with Alyson W. and we chatted about pens. WE NEED TO TALK :)
Nerdy little thrill of a review ! Thanks nick
comes in all clear! glass-like. got the stub of course, Amazon $31... will be mine before the week is over
Aha, came here from the preppy review, great info as always. For the price only the piston risk concerns me but no way to know if that would be a real issue except trying one.
You seem to like a more sleek-looking design, but you might be interested in the Retro 51 Hexomatic! Just a suggestion 😉
I don't normally like pens. But this one looks sweet.
How come we never saw a review of the CRKT Swindle? You had one in your possession a while back
Because I just filmed it this past week! Not super in love
you mean the Vaseline factory favorite knife?
lol @ vape, dad. Im an undergrad and if I just have my eco out and capped on a table or something, I'm CONSTANTLY being asked by other students if my pen is a vape. That is until I uncap it and start writing with it.
Just got my Petrol Safari and some limited edition petrol ink the other day. Happy with it so far, but I've got more writing to do to form a final opinion. The only disappointment so far is the cheap feeling plastic for the $30 price.
Enclusion I agree that it's durable, but I just didn't know what to expect. It just felt lighter and more hollow than I thought a $30 pen might be. This is my first fountain pen btw
Kinda wanted it to be made from a nice nylon for the price instead of abs plastic. Spent my real first day with it and I'd say that I'm happy with it for sure.
I love this pen. I have two: one with a 1.1mm stub and the other has a reground nib for writing in Arabic from FPNibs. The mini is better for edc though. As for what you said about the materials, have you seen what Aurora charges for plastic barrels?
Oh, the Mini? Nice! And yeah, I don't get expensive resin pens.
My TWSBI Eco leaked all the time. The ink would pour out where the nib fits in the rest of the pen. I tried refilling 7-8 times before it found the trash. So sad
One more thing I forgot to mention is that the pen is disassemblable and comes with a wrench. That definitely would have appealed to you as well.
Oh, neat. I kind of assumed, but barring greasing, it's not as crucial to me in a pen :)
Also, Nick, I'd be curious to hear about your favorite inks.
Me every pen review: Why's it putting it in the wrong ha- oh.
Fountain pens now? Btw, gold nibbed Sailor fountain pens are the best. Try one out if you get the chance.
I have all the fountain pens; TWSBI, Mont Blanc, Visconti, Pilot, Sheaffer, Parker, etc. etc. Sailors top them all.
Also, don't worry about the plastic. It's all the same plastic, Acrylic/PMMA resin/Polymethylmethacrylate. Companies just like to give them fancy names. -Cough- Mont Blanc, precious resin -cough- same thing as this TWSBI -cough- ...
What Sailor do you recommend?
I thought nick start to vipe....well...after the video...I realize I was not the only one who thought this was a vipe device...
Function over form but, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look clunky and awkward.
12 minutes and 36 seconds on pen ? I didn't realize there was a "fountain pen game"
Oh dude, the fountain pen game is a bonkers rat race of wishing "I sure do wish I owned this pen." Pricing wise it's pretty similar to the knife game too. For less that $30 you can get a pen that probably is going to do everything you could possibly ever need. For around $60 you can get a pen that is going to do everything you could ever possibly need and also have some real niceties to it.
For around $400 you can get a pen that is absolutely drool worthy.
If you'd be interested in even more fountain pen stuff (DON'T DO IT YOU WILL GO BROKE IF YOU GET INTO THIS HOBBY), check out Gourmet Pens and Dr SBRE Brown. They're my two favorite reviewers and interestingly enough they are married to each other and have a show they do together called "Serious Nibbage"
Like nick said in his don't get into watches video I'll say. Don't get into fountain pens. Also a black hole 😂
Don't have a fountain pen... Looks like a good starter for a noob... The black one looks better and the packaging looks pretty cool too... Might make a nice gift...
You should try the nemosine singularity but no delica size comparison, seriously thinking about unsubbing cause of this over sight.
I've found my nemosine quite subpar compared to my TWSBI. It doesn't write nearly as well
asthmaticrhino really, mine writes pretty smooth. Then again I only have the nemosine so I have no point of comparison :(
1st
Give me those cookies... 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
For a minute I thought that was a Vape and you started vaping Nick.
I really thought nick was reviewing a vape. Thank goodness I was wrong.
Nope, not my style.