Review: Noodler's Konrad Flex Nib Fountain Pen

Here's the Noodler's Konrad Flex Nib Fountain Pen, the other brother of the Noodler's Ahab. Both pens are actually quite similar. The main difference is the piston refilling mechanism. Konrad uses the twist type while Ahab uses a plunger.

This is a standard size fountain pen that comes in various colours. It's made of mainly plastic except for the clip, trimming and nib.

The plastic smells bad and it will take a while for it to wear off. The smell can even get onto your skin. It's bad. That's the same problem with the Ahab as well.

The pen looks and feels quite durable. It's priced at the same range as the Ahab at USD $20-30 so it's quite an affordable fountain pen. The overall design looks decent. You can see some sort of pattern underneath the surface of the body.

It's quite lightweight since it's mostly plastic.

Behind the pen is a cap that you can unscrew to reveal the knob for refilling. There's a transparent section just between the grip and body that is transparent so you can see how much ink is left. The ink reservoir holds a lot of ink.

The knob is the twisting type. I prefer the plunger type on the Ahab because it's much faster to refill ink with.

The steel nib only comes in one size. It's quite stiff actually. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the most flexible, this pen is probably 3-4. You need to apply pressure to get the thicker strokes.

Under normal pressure, this is probably a Fine-Medium stroke and with pressure you get a broad stroke.

Ink flow is good. It's able to keep up with the broad strokes but it can have railroading effect sometimes. Railroading happens when the ink does not flow fast enough and the two tines draw two lines instead of one.

Many get this pen for writing scripts. I bought this to draw. It's quite smooth on the paper. Performance is same as the Ahab actually.

The pen 8 years later

This is how the pen looks in 2023, 8 years after I wrote this review. The orange colour has deepened. The smell is still there but is now faint compared to when the pen was new.

Conclusion

It's a decent pen for the price. Performance is similar to the Noodlers Ahab. The main difference as mentioned is how the piston refill works. Personally, I think the Konrad looks better.

For writing purposes, because the nib is quite stiff and you need to apply a bit of pressure, writing can be tiring after a while. There are softer flex nib pens out there. Check out the Pelikan M200, Pilot Namiki Falcon and Dilli.

I'll rate this a 4 out of 5 stars.

Availability

You can find the Noodlers Konrad on Amazon at
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