Kaco Retro Fountain Pen Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

Trying new and unique fountain pens is always fun, especially when they come in at the lower end of the price spectrum. The Kaco Retro fountain pen is a sleek design from a Chinese company that offers a sense of nostalgia and modern colors.

I've definitely done my share of eBay perusing when trying to find some fun and inexpensive fountain pens to try from top Chinese sellers. But, you do run some additional risk when you purchase these pens because quality control isn't the best and your options for correcting any problems are convoluted. In the case of the Kaco Retro, you can purchase your pick from Cult Pens and be sure that your experience will be top notch. This takes all of the guess-work out of this particular pen!

Purchasing options aside, the Retro is actually a good pen. Like the name implies, it borrows heavily from the Parker 51 aesthetic, but manages to add some modern flair in the way of colors and the clip accent. Possibly the coolest feature of the pen is the use of a hooded nib, which means the grip section covers most of the nib and only allows the very tip to show through. The orange one I have is an eye-catcher, and it's also fun to pass around and let people try since it's an inexpensive fountain pen.

To me, the aspect of this pen that grabs my eye first every time is the little pin head at the end of the clip. The bright blue-green always catches my attention and I can't help but pick it up for a quick writing session. Each pen color has a coordinated clip accent, which just adds to the fun of these pens. The functionality of the clip is also excellent! It's strong and does a great job of holding the pen in place during transport.

Moving on the cap, it features a smooth friction-fit design to secure it to the pen when not in use. You can also post the cap easily while writing. The amount of force necessary to uncap or cap the pen feels almost perfect to my preference. It's a bit tight when trying to uncap, but you quickly get used to it after using the pen a few times. One thing I noticed quickly is that you should avoid twisting the pen in a counter-clockwise motion when uncapping it because this unscrews the grip section from the pen body! I never realized how much I rotate pens when removing the cap, but I have certainly noticed during my time with the Kaco Retro. This hasn't resulted in any ink accidents, but it is slightly annoying to be made to tighten the grip section after uncapping the pen.

Aside from the clip, the only other feature on the cap of the pen is a small embossed KG, which stands for the company name. It's very low-profile and is difficult to notice in most light.

The pen body and grip section are the same width and match up perfectly against a small clear ink window. The ink window is handy to show you how much ink is left in your converter or ink cartridge, but it's also really easy to just unscrew the section and take a closer look. Either way, it's definitely a nice visual point to break up all the orange.

The grip section is somewhat uncomfortable for my fingers due to the material and smooth, sloped nature of the grip. I always struggle with glossy plastic grips, and this one is no exception. It is comfortable in my hand at first, but quickly becomes slick and difficult to hold after I use it for a minute or two. Your experience will vary, but you should have a pretty good idea of whether this grip will work for you just based on the shape and materials used.

Now, how about that nib? It's a good nib! The manufacturer says it's an extra fine, but the one I have writes like a European fine. The Cult Pens website even notes that some of the pens write like a European medium, so keep that in mind when ordering. This isn't a good choice if you're trying to dial in your nib preferences or are only interested in certain nib sizes!

The nib is smooth, the feed provides plenty of ink while writing, and I've been really impressed with how well the pen works in general. My only complaint is due to the design of the grip and nib. The hooded nib looks great, but it's always difficult for me to make sure I'm holding the pen at the right orientation while writing. Fountain pen nibs work best when the nib is parallel to the page. In most cases, the nib ceases to function when you roll the nib too far to one side or the other. Not a big deal in most cases, but this pen lacks the visual cue of the actual nib, and it also has a featureless grip section to let you know when your grip is rolling a bit too far. The hooded nib is so hooded that I have a difficult time knowing where the sweet spot of the nib is located!

Minor quirks aside, this really is such a fun pen. It includes a couple of ink cartridges as well as a cartridge converter so that you can use your own bottled ink. As a writing instrument, it functions beautifully and manages to be really dependable and robust. The materials used are mostly plastic, but the pen body and cap feel solid instead of like thin plastic that will break easily. For a pen that costs about ten dollars, it's a fun experiment!

Aside from the awesome orange color featured in this review, you can also purchase the Kaco Retro in a variety of other fun colors, like Red, Blue, White, Turquoise, and Black.

(Cult Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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KACO SKY II Fountain Pen Review

(This is a guest post by Frank Dong. You can read more from Frank at his blog Frank Underwater)

What is KACO SKY II?

KACO is a stationery company in Shanghai, China. Established 8 years ago, the company has been delivering stationeries with award-winning industrial designs. While the gel-ink pens are their primary focus, they do keep offering fountain pens over the years. Recently the company has been partnering with the Pen World Magazine to promote its fountain pens lines.

The SKY fountain pens started in early 2016, priced at 39RMB ($6) on launch. Though KACO’s premium offerings have been largely neglected by Chinese pen lovers, the SKY did gain some traction within the community. Last May, the SKY II was launched, which shares the same design as the SKY but deployed some upgrades. Currently, you can have a SKY II from the Pen World magazine’s booth for free during a pen show if you get a subscription on-site.

Makrolon and black Schmidt nib, that’s the key differentiators marketed by the company, and they make this pen the first KACO pen that I want to own. After two weeks with the pen, I am in love. Forget the cliché designs from legacy brands, this is the best entry level fountain pens that have ever been made in China. But the SKY II is also imperfect or even annoying if you want to pull it out from a student’s pen cup and make it part of your EDC since the company clearly neglects the need of having a functional clip.

Let’s start with the bright side. For 69RMB ($11) you will get a metallic-looking pen instead of one in banal solid color, along with a stainless-steel nib with extra black coating, and both of these two upgrades worth the money.

The metallic red barrel makes this review unit pops up easily in my pen collection and resonates with certain electronic gadgets. According to the KACO, the barrels of the SKY II models are made from Makrolon polycarbonate, a name that deeply rooted in the success of LAMY 2000. For the 2000, LAMY put glass fibers into the material and brushed the surface, resulting in a pen that feels like a piece of warm wood (I learned this expression from Myke). While in the case of this SKY II, KACO finished it by applying a metallic paint to the red Makrolon base, creating a texture feels like a piece of warm aluminum. The metallic coating is thick and scratch-resistant, and I only managed to see the red base material from the outside by scraping it off with a knife. I don’t know too much about the properties of the specific grade of Makrolon used in the SKY II, but the material did survive several chest-height drops along with the rubbing with keys in my pocket. Most importantly, it just feels smooth, light and warm in hand.

With SKY II’s black Schmidt nib, the KACO joins the bandwagon of high-quality stainless-steel nibs moving beyond the basic looks of being in either silver or gold. That delivers a striking look which transforms the feeling of this pen—no lights could hit the black nib and bounce back to your face during your writing, and when the pen is rest on the desk, the black nib gives it an understated existence. Another reason for me to love a black German nib is that I can enjoy any ink without caring too much about cleaning the nib, making the whole experience more focused on the writing part rather than the pen I am writing with.

Even the physical performance of the nib could change a little bit. The company reminds its buyer that the extra black coating around the tipping material would result in more friction in certain writing angle, which is true in my experience. Thankfully (or not?) this extra friction from the tip disappeared after days of use.

Regarding other basics, the pen is a cartridge/converter filler, and its black nib is of size 5, made by Schmidt and branded in KACO’s logo. Unlike the black nibs from Kaweco Perkeo, it is a firm writer. It is noteworthy that although the nib and feed look the same as every other pen with a #5 Schmidt nib, they can’t be easily screwed out, due to a unique design at the end of the nib housing. I am fine with this move since in reality, this is not a pen built for pen addict who has a dozen of spare nibs.

Besides the nib and the barrel, the remaining of the pen is basically the same as the first generation of SKY, which is still an acceptable design two years later. The cylinder shape is simple and minimalistic, if not as nuanced as design from LAMY Aion or Pilot Kakuno. The clip still features a KG stamp, representing the KacoGreen branding the company uses for its writing instrument, and at the end of the barrel you may still be perplexed by an F (it's an EF-nib pen!), which means Fountain pen in the company’s explanation. All of these legacy designs are not ideal, but I can live with them. Nonetheless, I am rather glad to see the original design of SKY’s ergonomic nib section stays. That’s a really nice-looking grip, making the inside of the pen visible but not too distracting. The section also feels clear and crispy in hand, thanks to the unique surface pattern and large triangular construct.

(Photo Credit: KACO)

But by this point, I must look on the dark side of the SKY’s design, which I really hate—the clip is more of a decoration than a real clip. The clip on this SKY II is still an injection-molded one, integrated seamlessly into the top finial, and it is just bad. Since the clip is of the same material as the plastic part, itself is loose and lifeless. To render it even more useless, the clutch of the clip was moved from the clip to the body of the cap. That’s a confusing design, and I can barely clip the pen to my shirt, my pen loop, or sometimes even a hardcover notebook. There is no way to deny this clip is more functional when acting as a rotating stopper. If you happen to be a pen user who loves to clip your pen, this is a deal-breaker

However, I still remember comments from Paul G, one of the Pen Addict readers, under the Kaweco Perkeo review—be alert about the target audience of the pen when we are reviewing it from a power user’s perspective. At a price around $11, the SKY II is super affordable and looks totally different from other entry level Chinese pens, and that’s enough to get it noticed. Comparing with clipless student pens like Perkeo and Kakuno, the KACO SKY II is fine to have a sofe clip, since students usually don't clip pens and keep a big pencil case for their pens. Oh, did I mention the matte finish plastic package of this pen? It is a high-quality MUJI style pen case in nature!

To sum it up, the mark II version of the pen feels warmer, flashier, and way more confident in hand than its predecessor. Maturity and refinement are the keywords I always think about for this pen. Despite some lacks, it is still a legitimate upgrade and may lead a new direction for the KACO pens.