Review of the Hero 616

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My Hero 616’s arrived! Along with my first full bottle of ink: Noodler’s Bad Belted Kingfisher. It was my favorite out of all the samples I got.

I received 4 Hero 616’s: one red, one green, and two black. (Ordered from isellpens.com if you’re curious. I trust that pens from that site are genuine. And it’s the only site I’ve found that’s on the west coast- so it gets to me faster.)

I’ve only inked up one (the black) but so far I really like it! 

Nib I dip tested a few of the nibs. Most were very smooth. Only one was a little scratchy, but that’s understandable since they’re super fine. It’s finer than my parker vector fine, TWSBI fine, and the normal Pilot G2 pens, none of which seem fine at all anymore in comparison. The line it lays is similar to that of my Noodler’s Konrad Flex when it’s used with minimal pressure/no flex. I love the fineness of the nib since it will mean minimal feathering on most papers (which is good since I specifically got the 616’s to use at school). I’m able to write on cheap papers and notebooks with the hero 616 that I couldn’t with the TWSBI and Parker Vector.

There’s no flex at all. 

Most of the nibs don’t line up exactly to the hood, but that doesn’t bother me since it doesn’t affect functionality.

edit; I just tried writing with the smoothest one upside down. IT’S SO SMOOTH UPSIDE DOWN AND THE LINE IS SO FINE JUST WOW… Unfortunately not all of them are like that, but gosh, this is really nice!

Filling Filling it was a pain. I believe it’s an aerometric filler.The edges of the bar you press are very sharp… I probably wouldn’t cut myself on them but I did feel my skin wearing down a little. People are right about not being able to get a full fill. The regular fill using the squeezebar that doesn’t even go halfway into the tube lasts about 4 hours of nonstop writing. I’ve heard people have had better luck filling it by taking off the metal protector/squeeze bar, but the one I used was on too tight. Pulling hard just resulted in the rest of it unscrewing from the hood, not the metal protector coming off. On another, the metal protector came was already off when I unscrewed the barrel. The bulb is rather small and felt chalky. I haven’t inked that one yet, but maybe it’ll be easier.

I don’t think I will ink any of the others until this one breaks down… cleaning the pens is a pain. Getting water out when I just rinsed the first one took forever… so I wouldn’t recommend using these pens to test inks because if you don’t like it you’ll never get it out. I’m just going to dedicate one ink to each pen and use them as my daily workhorses that I take around. (I only have a steady supply of Bad Blue Heron, so until I find another ink I like enough to buy a whole bottle these other 616’s will stay unused.)

You can’t use it as an eyedropper because at the end of every pen there’s a hole. On some the hole is tiny. On others it’s huge. On one there are two holes connected that look like an 8. Poor quality control? 

There’s a tiny ink window that lets you see if the pen is almost empty. You really have to hold it to the light though since the window and the place where the ink is aren’t touching/near each other. I think this is a nice touch but I wish it were a little bigger.

Looks I like it because it’s pretty inconspicuous. They aren’t as flashy as the TWSBI (or at all) and could be mistaken for normal pens since the nib is fully hooded and only a tiny bit sticks out. The pen is a copy of the Parker 51, so if you like design you should like this one. I don’t have a Parker 51 to make any comparisons though. I feel pretty confident I could leave this on a desk for a few minutes and not have it stolen, which is what I want (unless there are other pen fanatics around and they mistake it for the Parker 51 xD).

Note: I wish I could turn the image sideways but every program and place I upload it to automatically rotates it… Anyone have any advice?

UPDATE: problems… After writing with it more I started noticing I was getting inky fingers. I checked, and sure enough INK WAS LEAKING from where the clutch ring was. The plastic had a tiny unevenness in it so it didn’t cover the ring all the way around and ink was leaking out. 

So I unscrewed it and rubbed some silicone grease on the threads… problem fixed, for now. I hope I won’t see any more problems from that!