There has been a sudden surge in the popularity of both collecting and using fountain pens over the last year or so leading to more and more people reaching out with a number of different questions about fountain pens. Finding the perfect fountain pen for you can be a total pain, especially if you are just starting out and have not had much experience with using the different brands of fountain pen to see how they write.
Due to this, as well as seeing so many people reaching out to specifically ask for advice on the smoothest fountain pen nib on the market, we have decided to focus on fountain pens with glass-smooth nibs for today’s article. Our hope is that we will be able to help any of our readers who are looking to add a smooth nibbed fountain pen to their collection and ensure that you get the best pen for your needs.
Please note that we will be commenting on various fountain pens throughout the article and considering them as brand new, right out of the box fresh purchases. Although we will be focusing on specific fountain pens for the article, unless otherwise stated, all featured pens below have replacement nibs on the market that are readily available and easy to source making it easy to find replacement smooth nibs in the future if you accidentally damage yours.
How Do I Choose A Fountain Pen Nib That Is Smooth
When it comes to finding the smoothest fountain pen nib on the market, you have to factor in a few things to find the smoothest pen for you. Thankfully, many of the modern fountain pens on the market right now perform very well no matter the circumstances meaning that you don’t have to worry about each of the factors below as much as you had to ten to twenty years ago.
Factor In Your Price Point
It should come as no surprise that the higher your budget, the better the quality of fountain pen you can usually pick-up often helping to improve the writing experience of the pen to get a butter-smooth nib. That said though, you cant just choose a high price point pen and hope that it will be smooth, different pens have been designed for slightly different things but the below fountain pens are out options for different budgets.
- Professional Level Budget - Montblanc 149
- High End Intermediate Budget - Pelikan m600
- Low End Intermediate Budget - Pilot 823
- Beginner Budget - Lamy 2000
- Entry Level Budget - Lamy Safari
We have ensured that our recommendations for smooth writing fountain pens above cover the whole price range to ensure that we have something for all of our readers, no matter your available budget. Please note that the Lamy 2000 does not have a replaceable nib but is an excellent pen that offers one of the smoothest writing experiences right out of the box and its low price point makes it a very popular option.
The rest of our recommended pens all have replaceable nibs if required but the nib that they come shipped with is known to be particularly smooth, especially if you follow our advice in the sections below. Please also note that the higher the budget does not necessarily mean the smoother the writing experience. In our opinion, the Lamy 2000 and the Pelikan m600 both have the smoothest nibs on there so there is no need to break the bank when looking for a smooth nibbed fountain pen.
Choose A Smooth Nib Size
Second only to your available budget, the next most important factor when on the hunt for a smooth nibbed fountain pen is the actual nib size that you will be opting to use with the pen. Although there is some debate on this, the general opinion amongst the fountain pen enthusiast community is that the broader the nib the smoother the writing experience.
With all of our recommended fountain pens listed above being offered in extra-fine, fine, medium, and broad with some of the pens offering additional options, the medium and broad options should offer the smoothest writing experience by far. When it comes to our cheapest recommendation, the Lamy Safari, we would only recommend that you go with the broad nib option as the other nib options can be a little scratchy. The rest of the pens recommended above all offer a smooth writing experience with their medium and broad nib options but broad does usually tend to be slightly smoother than medium.
The two remaining factors that we cover below, ink type and paper type can also come into play making an extra-fine or fine nib very scratchy and a pain to use if you use cheap ink or cheap paper with the fountain pen too. This effect does not usually come into play with the medium or broad nibs and is another reason that we would recommend that our readers ensure that they opt to pick up a medium or broad nib when looking for a smooth fountain pen.
Go With A High-Quality Ink
Although there is some debate about how much of a difference ink type can actually make to your writing experience, it is pretty much agreed that for the smoothest possible writing experience no matter what pen you use, you should always be going with a high-quality, premium ink option. Thankfully, high-quality, premium fountain pen ink is actually relatively cheap compared to some of the luxury fountain pens recommended in our list above so most budgets will be able to use a good, smooth ink with their pen of choice.
The vast majority of fountain pen brands seem to recommend that the users of their pens only use their brand of ink with their brand of pens. They often try to say that they have optimized their ink for optimal performance with their pen range but this is very hard to prove. The general consensus from the fountain pen enthusiast community does seem to be that any refined, premium level ink is good enough and we totally agree.
After the initial refining processes and the use of higher quality pigments and dyes in the inks, there really is little to nothing else the ink producers can do to further improve their products. This is why we generally just recommend that you focus on any premium quality ink for writing and often just go with your favorite color or share rather than your favorite brand.
For example, Noodler's Fountain Pen Ink is generally considered to be one of the best options available and offers a very smooth writing experience while also being available in pretty much every color you could ever need. The Noodler’s Ink range has been tried and tested in pretty much every fountain pen on the market and has managed to rightfully earn itself an excellent reputation amongst the community over the years and it is well worth trying out.
Try To Avoid Low Quality Paper
Depending on what you are going to be using your smooth fountain pen for, you may not have control over the quality of paper you have to write on. For example, many people who use their fountain pen for work may be given a stack of order forms to sign off that is from an external company and they may use low quality paper.
This is one of the reasons that we try to stress that you should try to go with a medium or broad nib on your fountain pen when looking for the smoothest possible writing as they tend to perform better on cheaper, low-quality paper without having that scratchy feel. In addition to its lower price tag, the Lamy 2000 is a great fountain pen for anyone looking for a smooth nib as it performs very well on all paper.
If you are looking for a pen for personal use and get to choose the paper you will be writing on, we would highly recommend that you check out both Tomoe River paper and Rhodia paper if possible. Although there are a few other high-quality papers available, we feel that these are the two most popular right now and both have excellent reputations while offering a very smooth writing experience even with extra fin and fine nibs.
What Is The Smoothest Fountain Pen Nib
As we have covered above, there are a number of smooth fountain pen nib options on the market right now at various price points. Here is our list again to save you from having to scroll up with the budget range for each option side by side with the pen.
- Professional Level Budget - Montblanc 149
- High End Intermediate Budget - Pelikan m600
- Low End Intermediate Budget - Pilot 823
- Beginner Budget - Lamy 2000
- Entry Level Budget - Lamy Safari
In our opinion, the Lamy 2000 or the Pelikan m600 will probably be the better options in our list for the majority of our readers. They are both particularly smooth and cover the budget ranges pretty well between them if you are putting the smoothness of the nib as your primary deciding factor.
Thats said though, all five suggested fountain pens above come with a silky smooth nib right out of the box and can make a great collection to your stationary collection. Please keep in mind that you should be trying to go with a medium or broad nib, a decent quality ink, and good quality paper for the smoothest possible writing experience with your fountain pen though.
Do Fountain Pen Nibs Get Smoother With Use
Although all of our recommended fountain pens do writing particularly smooth right out of the box, all fountain pen nibs do tend to get smoother over time. As this process usually occurs due to regular use of your fountain pen, it can be hard to realize that your fountain pen nib is getting smoother with use as you don’t notice any immediate chance in the writing experience.
Depending on the price point of your fountain pen of choice, you can writing with your regular fountain pen that you have essentially broken in over a few weeks and then try writing with a brand new variant of the fountain pen. Although the brand new one will still be smooth, it wont usually be glass smooth as it takes time to wear the nib down.
This process can also depend on the material that the nib is made from with gold nibs usually being the best to smooth out quickly. Gold plated nibs are usually next depending on what the material is under the gold plating and stainless steel nibs usually come in at last place and can sometimes take months to smooth out to be glass smooth when writing.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over the smoothest fountain pen nibs on the market right now and we hope that you have found our article helpful. If you are yet to make your mind up on the fountain pen that you want to go with, we would highly recommend the Lamy 2000 even if you do have the budget available for a higher price point pen as it truly is an excellent quality fountain pen that is smooth right out of the box.
If you are more of a fountain pen enthusiast or the collection and have a higher budget available then the Pelikan m600 is another excellent option with a very smooth nib. We just want to stress that the higher price tag of the Pelikan m600 over the Lamy 2000 is not just due to the smoothness of the nib, a number of factors are all taken into account so when judged purely on how smooth their nibs write, both pens are very similar even though the m600 is almost double the price of the Lamy 2000.
