Hero 958 Review

September 13, 2013

Introduction – I normally don’t buy a pen with this much of gold trims but the interesting nib and low cost made me buy it from a local retailer.

Appearance, Design, Build Quality – It is a all metal pen with body black in color (which started to come off after a week use and inside it is the ugly gold color). Grip Section is smooth metal with groove at end for cap locking (again in gold color which is also fading slowly). Cap and its clip is also in gold color, but the texture on the cap is really nice making it somewhat attractive. Hero logo is embossed in the clip and model number near the bottom of cap. Other than color quality construction quality is very good with nib, cap and body parts holding each other faultlessly.

Weight and Dimensions – Being a metal pen it is on a heavier side compared to all popular Hero 616s. Grip portion is very thin, I didn’t measure it precisely but I think it would be around 10mm and length would be 140 mm unposted and 150 mm posted. here are few snaps in comparison with Hero 616 and Wality 71J

Nib and performance – After I flushed the pen quite rigorously ink started flowing seamlessly. Before that there was lot of skipping observed. But once it started giving output it was the best writing experience I had till that day. It doesn’t have any marking for nib size or grade but it is a steel nib with unique shape and writes between F and EF. Output from feed is on a dry side with a great hand to page feedback and vice versa. Some might feel nib to be a bit scratchy but I observed later on that it was due to Parker ink, so after changing ink to Camlin royal blue it started giving great results. Nib has "W" embossed. I an unaware of its connotation.

Filling System – it is typical hero aeromatic filler.

Cost and value – as I said it was very cheap around $3. For me it was worth its value.