The Faber-Castell Ondoro is a beautiful fountain pen to look at.

It’s got a stainless steel nib and an eye-catching hexagonal barrel of shiny black resin, topped off by a chrome cap.  It even uses the shorter cartridges (which I like), but there’s one problem: fingerprints.

All you have to do is hold the pen for a little while and write, put it down, pick it up again, and the barrel and cap are covered in smudgy fingerprints, which is annoying.

One other issue I have with the pen is, if you leave it down, even for a minute, when you pick it up again and start to write, no ink comes out, so you have to scribble on another scrap of paper to get it flowing again.

It seemed like a lovely pen to have when I tried it out at The Pen Corner in Dublin (a delightful shop you could lose yourself in for a good hour or two), but upon more frequent use at home, I’m less than wowed, especially considering the cost.