Haolilai 611F

[dcwaites]

I have been looking at the Haolilai 801F as a result of its reviews on the FPN, and was intrigued by the properties of the nib. However, when I added up the cost of the pen, along with the cost of postage to Australia, it became a bit unrealistic. So I looked around and found that there was a model, the 611F, with an apparently identical nib. This image is from the vendor's eBay auction, where it was described as "HL01 HAOLILAI GOLDEN CAP 22KGP M FOUNTAIN PEN"

 

 

First Impressions (7/10)

This pen is discretely flashy. It was well-presented in a plastic, but elegantly designed, box. It seemed a little small at first, but that is because I have been using my Jinhao X-450s over the last few days. It really is a ‘normal’ sized pen.

 

Appearance (7/10)

The cap is gold-coloured metal while the barrel and section are black plastic with gold fittings. Once un-capped, it would not be out of place in any business setting, while still being discrete.

 

Design/Size/Weight (6/10)

This pen has a ‘normal’ fully exposed nib. The section has longitudinal chasing marks that help make it less slippery. Overall, it seems a little small, but then I am comparing it to pens like the Jinhao X-450. It is very similar in dimensions to a Parker 51 or Hero 616 Jumbo.

The barrel is plastic, other than the gold fittings on the ends. this makes it much lighter than most Chinese pens, except for the plastic Hero 51 clones.

I would have liked the section to be a little fatter, though, given the size of my hands.

 

Nib (8/10)

The nib is 22 kt Gold Plated and marked M, presumably for medium size. This nib does write with some ‘expression’, with some parts of lines narrow and others wider. Overall, it writes Medium-Fine on the Uncalibrated Open-Ended David Scale. You can see that with the right ink, you can get a reasonable amount of shading.

Out of the box the nib wrote a little drily, and it was a little scratchy. I wrote for a while using Parker Quink Blue with Solv-X, and that got it flowing better. The scratchyness was fixed with a couple of minutes work on some brown paper.

 

Filling System (6/10)

The pen comes with a converter and will take standard international cartridges. While I haven’t accurately measured the capacity of the converter, it does seem to have a little more useable volume than the ones that came with my Jinhaos.

 

Cost and Value (7/10)

I bought the pen from eBay vendor comeon1788.

The pen cost me a little over AU$10, with postage being a bit over AU$12, for a total of AU$23. That is quite cheap compared to the price + postage of getting its orange cousin from the States. As well, for my $12 postage, I got a tracking number, which I haven’t had from a Chinese seller before. Extra brownie points to comeon1788.

 

Conclusion (68%)

Overall, it’s nice little pen. I could find no faults in the assembly of the pen, and with the normal treatment that is often needed today, it writes flawlessly.

 

And, how does it write? See below --

 

 

 

Edited June 19, 2008 by dcwaites

[lovemy51]

i got the same one, but with the chrome cap. i was just using it today. i really like it and for the money, at $9 USD plus shipping... it's still not bad.

 

here's a pic of my two haolilai's:

 

 

edited ps. how rude of me... first of all, thanx for the review, DCW

Edited June 19, 2008 by lovemy51