Inventery’s Pocket Fountain Pen is a sleek and stylish modular pen that can be customized with a variety of caps and tips. At first glance, there’s a lot to love about this little beauty. The slim design has a smaller footprint than the Kaweco Sport, yet the sturdy brass body gives the pen a nice heft.
The pen extends to full size by posting the threaded cap, and the cap posts and caps securely. I have large hands, and the posted pen rests comfortably in the web of my fingers.
Pocket Fountain Pen with optional extender (top), Lamy 2000 (middle), Pocket Fountain Pen without optional extender (bottom).
Attention to detail is key in taking on the established fountain pen brands and Inventery delivers. The body finishes and coatings are flawless, and the modular components screw smoothly into place and hold together firmly. The pen clip even aligns perfectly with the nib when posted.
I have to take a moment to point out the pen’s modular cap system. It comes with four interchangeable cap tips: clip, keychain loop, stylus, and clip-less. My favorite tip is the simple clip-less, which gives the pen a stunning minimalist look. It’s simply one of the sleekest looking pocket fountain pens that I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of clips, Inventery’s Pocket Fountain Pen clip is sturdy, although there’s an intentional gap between the clip and the cap body. I like the appearance, but it certainly won’t hold the pen in place like some of the tighter clips on the market. Personally, I have no problem carrying the little guy in my pocket without the clip attachment. Since it caps so securely and looks stunning without the clip, I find it worth the risk and have had zero issues.
Okay, okay—design is great, but how about the nib? The pen comes with a Schmidt Iridium tipped nib (more geeky info on “Iridium tips” here). Overall, the nib is adequate, with a nice amount of flex for a steel nib, but some scratchiness on side strokes. Although the nib isn’t quite as special as the pen itself, it works well, and its few idiosyncrasies shouldn’t scare you away. Yes, a gold nib would be nicer, but I’d also feel much less comfortable carrying around a gold-nibbed pen loose in my pocket. Steel nibs are just so inexpensive to replace.
I have to admit, the ballpoint tip sat in the pen box for several days. I tend to use fountain pens by default, but I swapped out the fountain pen tip for the ballpoint tip and was pleasantly surprised. It’s also a consistent writer and sits in the middle of wet and dry. When I’m not writing with a fountain pen, I’m writing with a Retro 51. This tip isn’t quite as nice as a Retro 51 Easy Flow refill, but for a pen that offers so much versatility, it writes nicely. The fact that the pen comes with both fountain pen and ballpoint tips makes it an easy recommendation for someone wanting to dip their toe into the fountain pen world.
Even the packaging is stunning (shown with optional metal extender).
All in all, the folks at Inventery have produced an extremely well-designed and customizable pocket pen that clearly succeeds in its attempt to be both sleek and functional. The price point is the only detail that gives me pause; however, I think that it’s a fair price when considering all of the included customizable components, excellent design, and the overall obsessive level of manufacturing quality. It even comes with nine ink cartridges to get you started. The nib is nothing to write home about, but the pen makes up for the standard nib in almost every other aspect of its design.
The Inventery Pocket Fountain Pen is available in three styles: onyx, brass, and brushed chrome, and all three finishes are stunners. There’s also an optional pen extender, which extends the length of the pens body by a cap-length or so, but I personally found it unnecessary, especially for $30. For full details on the Inventery Pocket Fountain Pen, check out the product page.
The Inventery Pocket Fountain Pen was provided free of charge for the purposes of this review.