When my educational leave ended three weeks ago, I bought myself a little present: A Kaweco AL Sport fountain pen. A couple of days prior to that day I had seen it somewhere on Reddit and instantly fell in love with its simple yet stylish look. I’ve now had it in active use for more than 20 days and thought it might be time to give it a little review.
When closed, the fountain pen is only around 11 cm long which makes it just a little over 1 cm bigger than the Lamy pico. Both of these pens, when opened, still end up being full-sized with the Kaweco AL Sport requiring you to screw its cap onto its back. It’s possible to write with it without the cap attached but it’s far less comfortable for me thanks to my large hands. With it, though, the pen feels great.
That’s also how I’d describe the whole product from a material point of view. Every time I unscrew it I hear the sound I’d expect from solid metal/aluminium which puts a little smile on my face! The nib (in my case an EF) is also well-made and leaves far less ink on the paper compared to something like the Lamy accent (also with an EF nib). The ink flow isn’t as consistent as with the Lamy but that’s only a minor nitpick and only becomes apparent when I haven’t used the pen for a day or so and resolves itself after a minute or two.
Actually, the only big complaint I have with the Kaweco Sport is the capacity of its converter which is much smaller than the comparable Lamy. This means that I have to refill it at least twice every week and refilling the pen using standard ink bottles is a mess. I basically have to hold the pen at the very end of the converter and then pull the piston which, so far, has never ended without having to clean the grip of the pen afterwards.
But as I said, this is the only real complaint I’ve had so far and I use the Kaweco AL Sport every single day to write journal entries and things like todo lists. Thanks to its very controlled ink flow it’s even possible to use on paper that would normally look soaked with a Lamy’s EF nib. It was a good present for myself 😉
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