Review: Pilot Custom Heritage 92 Fountain Pen

The Pilot Heritage 92 is a fountain pen with a built-in ink reservoir that refills with a piston mechanism. It's priced around USD $130 and is quite value for money because it's a good pen.

The pen comes in a nice box with faux leather pattern. Inside you have the pen, no converter required.

It's a medium size pen, measuring 13.5cm with the cap and 12cm+ without. The pen's mainly made of resin and is lightweight. It handles very well in hand, and is comfortable to hold for long periods. It's a nice streamlined body. I like the size. The build quality seems good.

Compared to other built-in reservoir piston fountain pens such as the TWSBI 530 or Pelikan M200, the Pilot pen has the better design, although I must say that I like the Pelikan M200 very much as well.

The Custom Heritage 92 comes in various tinted colours for their demonstrators (transparent) bodies. There's also the sold black version available which is cheaper. Of course, the main point of getting the demonstrator is you get to see the interior of the pen and the ink filling mechanism at work.

In the photo above, you see the piston behind the body. Just twist the knob and the piston goes up and down to suck in the ink.

For cleaning, just gently twist the nib and feed in any direction until it loosens. The feed is not screwed, but merely pushed in until it's tightened.

When the pen is capped, you can still see the nib, but it's clouded by that black tinted plastic inside.

The beautiful 14K gold nib measures 2cm. Although it's 14K gold, the colour is that of silver or chrome, unlike the gold coloured 14K nib on the Pilot Custom 823.

So overall, the pen's main colours are black, silver and transparent.

The nib is smooth and ink flow is good. Lines are black and wet. I like that it's a lightweight pen that feels "light on its feet" when used for sketching.

Here's a closer look at the built-in piston refilling mechanism. It's more convenient to refill compared to those that use ink converters because now you don't have to unscrew the body.

The reservoir holds a lot of ink so you don't have to refill it often. That's great.

Below are some sketches with the pen.

The lines are consistent and predictable as you would expect. I also enjoy the feedback of the paper texture as the nib moves.

Conclusion

The Pilot Custom Heritage 92 is a wonderful fountain pen that I think is seriously worth the money. It's a good performer and seriously is not too expensive for a quality pen.

If you want something smaller or "lighter on its feet", check out the Pelikan M200. The Pelikan and the Pilot get my vote for the best pens with built-in ink reservoirs.

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