Review: FPR Himalaya V2 fountain pen with EF flexible nib

Big thanks to Alan D Barbour for recommending me this pen, and to Fountain Pen Revolution for sending me one for this review.

The FPR Himalaya V2 is one of many fountain pens available from FPR. The main selling point of their pens is there's the option to buy the pens with flexible or extra flexible nibs.

The colour for my pen is called Peacock Aqua. There are ten colours to choose from.

The pen is made of acrylic and the swirling designs look gorgeous.

It almost looks like marble.

The cap is the twist-type and comes with a chrome clip and ring.

The cap ring only has the letters FPR on it.

The top of the cap can be unscrewed to remove the clip. The top is hollow which means you can clean the inside of the cap easily.

And you'll want to clean the cap occasionally because the cap is partially translucent and you can see ink stains from the outside.

The pen has a nice weight to it and feels comfortable to hold.

There are actually seven nibs you can choose from to go with the pen, namely

• Extra Fine
• Fine
• Medium
• Broad (+$4)
• 1mm Stub (+$4)
• Steel Flex (+$4)
• EF Steel Ultra Flex (+$14)

Some nib options are more expensive. The EF Steel Ultra Flex nib is $14 in addition to the cost of the pen which is $35. So the total with the ultra flex nib will be US $49.

This is one of those steel nibs that has curved sides for the flex. Note the ebonite feed is quite thick at the bottom. When writing, you have to angle the pen such as the feed does not touch the paper.

Design on the nib is quite simple. The EF letters are hidden inside the grip section and can only be seen when the nib is detached.

The ink channel on the feeds looks big and ink flow for the pen is fantastic. The ink channel is able to keep up with writing thick strokes consistently.

This end on the grip section is not a perfect circle. It's actually shaped to the nib and feed. So when you remove the nib and feed, you can't twist it much. You can twist it slight to wriggle the nib and feed to make them loose before pulling them out.

A twist-type ink converter is provided with the pen. This ink converter actually has screw threads at the opening and on the screw threads is grease. Himalaya V1 and V2 converters are not interchangeable.

This is a pen that can be dismantled completely for a thorough cleaning.

The nib is quite smooth on the paper. Even though this nib is supposed to be an EF nib, the lines look like they are from a F nib instead. When flex, you get a Fine to Medium variation.

The Namiki Falcon can produce thinner lines.

And this Spencerian modified Namiki Falcon can produce even thinner lines, so the thin-thick line variation here is more noticeable. But this nib should only be used by pulling the nib in a downwards motion. The sharp point will poke into the paper if you draw upwards. You can draw with the FPR Himalaya V2 in any direction and motion because the nib is smoother on paper.

Lines from the EF nib of the Pilot Penmanship is noticeably thinner but that's a steel nib without flex.

You can certainly get some nice line variation with this pen. I had expected the nib to produce finer lines but sharper nibs can scratch or poke the paper. So the compromise is between having a real EF nib but deal with scratchy performance, or have a F nib with smoother performance. It's a good compromise.

This nib is more flexible compared to the budget Noodler's Ahab and Noodler's Konrad.

Conclusion

The FPR Himalaya V2 is a pen that looks good and comes with a flex nib that performs well. So yes, it's worth the money.

You can find this pen at https://fprevolutionusa.com/