Reviewing Pilot Plumix Italic Cool on the Cheap

Do you want to discover how the Pilot Plumix, under $10, can make your writing look AMAZING?

Good, then you’re in the right place. This little joy of a pen will give you line variation and slow your writing down enough to really make your penmanship shine.

Pilot Plumix Italic Design

This a simple pen with an interesting shape. The smoke gray body and cap is intersected by a transparent section to show the bottom of the ink cartridge and section feeding the ink to nib. It’s a bonus that you get to learn to write with an italic nib for under $10!

The Pilot Plumix Italic has such an unusual shape that your eye is drawn to it. I mean, who designs fountain pens with little tiny caps with fins that stick out on the sides? What about the swirling lines around the body?

Pilot does.

Pilot Plumix appears to be an upgraded Penmanship from Japan. The cap and overall shape are the same, with some added detailing along the body lines and an italic nib comes standard.

The Plumix is available in black, blue, and purple. At this point, all come in a steel, medium italic nib.
One cartridge comes in the package in Pilot black. This is not my favorite black because I prefer inky, saturated blacks. This is a bit of a really dark grey, which matches the body of the pen, but not what I like to use.

(Well, I prefer blue, but more about that under inks.) If I’m using black ink, I want it a deep black. But on with performance.

There is no clip on the Plumix, so if you’re looking for one to clip to a shirt, this isn’t your pen. In addition, I dropped this pen several times.

I don’t know why, maybe because I knew it was only $8, but several times I dropped it (cap on) to the floor and although ink splattered all inside the cap and became visable through the translucent cap, the plastic never cracked.

How Does The Nib Perform On Different Papers?

Pilot Plumix comes with an Italic nib. This means that the tip is ground into a rectangle rather than an oval.

What that does to your writing is creates thicker and thinner lines… Thicker on the downstrokes when the fat part of the rectangle is contacting paper at it’s widest point, and thin on horizontal strokes.

The sharp edges tend to catch the paper once in a while and if you’re not at a dead-on angle, the nib can seem to skip.This alone makes writing with the pen a fun experience, although italic nibs can be finicky, including this one.

What’s really happenning is that the rectangle needs to be touching exactly right for ink to deliver and when you use a round nib, you can rotate it as you write without affecting ink delivery. When I rotate an italic the same way, it skips because one of the corners will touch without the rest of the rectangle.

I thought this was the pen, but it’s really how I hold the pen.

I write very quickly and had to slow down just enough to make sure I wasn’t rotating the pen as I wrote so it wouldn’t skip. The variations in the lines made slowing down worth it.

It takes a couple of paragraphs to really get in the groove of not rotating the nib. Once I got the angle consistent as I wrote, this baby makes your writing dance. I LOVE the thick and thin line variations!

If you happen to rotate the nib, it will feel scratchy because the sharp edge catches the paper.It’s not scratchy at all when you keep the nib consistent.

I even wrote on an extremely bumpy, grainy, thick paper in a handmade card and it writes consistently and smoothly. Beautiful, fun italic. You should try it for your first italic nib.

The italic nib will make your writing look AMAZING. It just gives it so much more flair than a standard round nib.

The Cap – Screw/Pull/Post and What That Means

The cap screws off rather easily. It has little fins on each side of the cap to make removing the smallish cap a breeze.

The cap also posts securely on the back of the pen, which surprised me given it’s tapered shape.

The threads inside the cap grip the tapered body securely and the cap stays put without chattering or moving around.

If you drop it, as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, the ink will splatter inside the cap. When you post the cap on the back it will get on the back of the pen. Thankfully, the pen is long enough that any leftover ink doesn’t end up in the web of your hand.

Who is the Fountain Pen Good For? Is It a Good Overall Value?

The Pilot Plumix italic nib is a fun, cheap pen that will be a great introduction to italic nibs if you haven’t used one before. Just remember that the nib has sharper edges by design, so it will catch on the paper if you accidentally rotate it out of alignment as you write.

This is a great every day pen and super durable. I dropped this or knocked it off my nightstand at least three times and the plastic didn’t crack, and the pen wrote the same. This is obviously not a guarantee, but I was surprised it didn’t crack or cause issues.