I’ve recently become a huge fan of TWSBI pens. Over the last 6 months I’ve purchased three:
- The Diamond 580 Silver
- The Diamond Mini Classic
- The Vac Mini
The Diamond Mini and the Diamond 580 are piston fillers, which I really love. They hold so much ink! The Vac Mini is a vacuum filler. I really wanted to love it, too, but I don’t. It holds as much ink as the other two pens but, while I LOVE the fine nib, I don’t like how much condensation there is in the end of the pen and I don’t like that I have to twist it open every time I want to write. That, unfortunately, is one of the features of a vacuum pen! I guess that means that it just isn’t for me.
I’ve been trying to figure out the advantage of a vacuum filler over a piston filler, and the only one I can really come up with is that a vacuum filler can withstand changes in pressure without leaking better than a piston filler. That is important for people who fly a great deal, but not really a concern for me (more’s the pity). I’m glad I tried the vac mini, but my go-to is shaking out to be the mini classic.
My other recent purchase is a Midori Traveler’s Notebook (passport size), and I L-O-V-E it! It’s so cute, and so stashable, and yet so usable! It comes with a little cotton bag that protects the leather from wear. Mine also came with an unlined Midori refill notebook. I purchased two additional grid notebooks and a pocket insert. It’s really easy to swap out refills.
Midori notebook paper is really nice to write on if you’re a fountain pen user–it’s smooth and doesn’t bleed through. Up until now I’ve been a Molskine fan, but I’m definitely converting to Midori!
UPDATE (2016-11-21): I continued to have issues with the mini-vac — the most serious of which was that, no matter how loosely I tightened the end, it would always be so tight that I couldn’t unscrew it when I wanted to write. I was getting pretty frustrated with it and then the end of the cap snapped off without warning! I’m not sure what to do with it now. I cleaned it and put it on a shelf to think about later. I wonder if I just got a 🍋?