Best fountain pen 2024: add timeless style to your desk

The best overall fountain pen

What with how well they handle chocolate and cheese, we should’ve always left it up to the Swiss to make a thoroughly desirable and beautifully engineered fountain pen. Coated in palladium and engraved all over with an intricate guilloche design (that’s ‘braided’, for those who don’t belong to some kind of pattern-making guild), the Caran D'ache Ecridor Retro Palladium-Coated Fountain Pen is both tough, beautiful and comes with a lifetime international guarantee to back it up. But how does it write? We found that it writes as well as pens double its price, we love this pen's balance, weight, and smooth line.

The best luxury fountain pen

The Montblanc Le Grand 146 Fountain Pen is an indulgence for sure, but its high price tag rewards you with a dreamy handwriting journey. Much of that revolves around the nib, which is a 14k gold and Rhodium combination in the medium format that delivers a precise ink-to-paper experience. Similarly, the body, though fashioned from more conventional black resin, feels nicely balanced and you can tell that this is a quality product. As you’d expect from Montblanc, the Le Grand 146 Fountain Pen comes lavishly presented in a gift box while they also offer a dazzling array of different ink colours to compliment it.

The best affordable fountain pen

Want to make a style statement without spending the big bucks? The Dryden Luxury Fountain Pen ticks all of the boxes when it comes to delivering a great all-around real ink experience at a fraction of the price. The design is classic, functional, and there’s a medium tip so it’s perfect as a gift or for anyone who doesn’t have a specific preference. The other bonus with this fountain pen is that it comes with an ink converter, which means that you can use it with both cartridges or liquid ink. In fact, we think this one is hard to beat at the lower end of the market.

The best unique fountain pen

If you’ve grown tired of black and gold, this wood-cased fountain pen is ideal. With just the right amount of bling courtesy of a mirror-finish cap, nib and collar, the bulk of the pen is given over to smooth pear wood with a beautiful natural grain that we think feels wonderful to write with. Coming with a cartridge/converter system, you can use modern cartridges or an inkwell, and reviewers were pleased to report a smooth writing experience for both.

The best versatile fountain pen

As stationery geeks, we think every fountain pen is beautiful in its own way (don’t laugh), but sometimes the choices can seem a little… well, safe. Refreshingly, this Parker pen takes a little walk on the wild side, offering seemingly endless options for customisation, including a choice of medium or fine nibs, three nib materials, and over 15 colour, print and trim combos. Most importantly, its action is smooth as butter and Parker is reputable as a high quality brand – what’s not to love?

The best lightweight fountain pen

Building on the success of the original Cross Century pen, the Century II beefs up the profile and adds a contrasting silver and gold colourway to create a new classic. What reviewers loved about the original is still here in full force, though. We commend the leak-proof design, immune to all kinds of bumps and jiggles in transit; the beautifully smooth writing action, and the longevity of the build, with one long-time user noting the impressive lack of wear on the gold plating.