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Lunch » Tags » Writing » Reviews » Hero 330 Fountain Pen

Hero 330 Fountain Pen

1 rating: 4.0

Chinese-made fountain pen

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Tags: Office Products, Office Supplies, Writing, Pens, Inexpensive

1 review about Hero 330 Fountain Pen

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Hero saves the day for inexpensive fountain pens

Mar 26, 2009

by happydog

Rating:

The Hero 330 is one of a number of fountain pens from China that are hitting the United States. China has been a manufacturer of fountain pens for quite some time, partly due to the fact that fountain pens lend themselves to Chinese letters much more easily than, say, a ball point.

With the recent upswing in interest in fountain pens in the United States and Britain, Hero (as well as other Chinese fountain pen makers) have stepped up to take in the low end of the industry. Finding the Hero 330 is not hard; any Ebay search, or even a Google search, will yield dozens of sites selling them for as little as $5.00.

But what does your $5.00 get you? Quite a lot, actually.

The 330 is sort-of-notorious (among pen geeks, anyway) for being a clone (at least in appearance) of the Parker 51, 21, and other "hooded" American pens from the 1940's and 1950's. It looks like them for sure, but it is obviously made of less high-quality materials. And really, for $5.00 American, well, you'd be silly to expect a dead-on copy of the 51 or 61.

However, viewed on it's own merits, the Hero 330 is very acceptable. The pen has a clean appearance, with a plastic body and a gold-toned cap. The cap is, let us say, not made of titanium. I don't think it would be damaged with normal use, but you could definitely put a ding in it without much effort. This is the only weak point to the pen, structurally.

The Hero 330 also uses an "aerometric filling system," which means you are going to have to have a bottle of ink. However, bottled ink is surprisingly available, especially online. To fill it, you unscrew the body, put the pen's tip in the ink, press a button, and the ink goes into the pen. This can be a great pre-writing ritual. You will not need to refill the pen as often as you might think, and there's something kind of endearingly retro about filling a pen with ink this way.

I loaded the pen with ink when I got it, and it wrote immediately with no problems. You should be warned, though; many sellers state that the Hero 330 "writes a substantially fine line," and they mean SUBSTANTIALLY FINE. It's readable and easy to use, but it's definitely fine, not medium at all. Usually, Asian pens are such that if the pen maker states that it's a medium point, it'll probably be an American fine point. This is advertised as a fine point pen, and it is indeed fine.

If you are one of those people who likes to spread a lot of ink around, and sign your signature in giant flowing loops (not that there's anything wrong with that), you won't like the Hero 330 all that much. But...if you're a person who writes small and likes to get a lot on the page, this would do it excellently well, and at a price point that is far lower than even many of the disposable fountain pens.

So if you have a need for a fine point fountain pen and you don't have a lot of money, this is a keeper. It's lightweight and it puts down a good line, and the appearance of the pen is classy and retro. Overall, pretty excellent for $5!