Hero 825 Fountain Pen

My cousin in China picked up this Hero 825  fountain pen for me at a staionery store. There weren't many varieties available so she just went for two of the more expensive model (at 20 yuan, something around 3 US dollars, the cheaper one are around 6-8 yuan).

The 825, according to the print right on the pen cap, is designed for financial and accounting use and I am not entirely sure why, the pen isn't particularly sharp looking nor the nib is fine enough (for number crunching around the corners).

  The pen body is sleek and somewhat weighty and the cap shuts securely. I learned that when you are dealing with Hero pens, you should never take secure closure for granted...The handle is cone-shaped and very comfortable for my (apparently they are) small hands and the medium sized nib is shiny and pretty. Beside the hideous semi-translucent orange accents, so far so good.

Two weeks after receiving the pen...the metal barrel has detached itself from the orange band (Nice to know that I am not the only one who hate it!). The pen takes international cartridges/converter but there is a catch...The ink well (not sure what it's called) is slightly bigger than other pens (that take international cartridges) so if you use your own converter on the pen, you will have its hole permanently stretched and usable on this pen only...

The Hero 825 doesn't write at all: With a lot of pressure, ink would come out whenever they want to. With my normal writing angle, this skips 80% of the time, making the writing illegible. I was trying to fix it at first but after the barrel fell off...I stopped bother.

Overall: I didn't know that Hero (a brand I knew and trust when I was in grade school) has gotten this bad...