*Quick warning* to everyone with this pen: Be careful when flushing it. I've got a bulb syringe, similar to Chris' and as I was flushing it, I probably used too much pressure and made the feed to shoot out right down the drain never to be seen again. Luckily I had a spare Hero 616, which played a donor role and after few minutes with pliers, the transplantation was successful. And from then on I'm flushing carefully and in a cup of water, not in the sink.

I bought a 618 in a pink glitter body. It's my first piston fountain pen and your video helped me so much!

I love your speed, tone, and how you take your time. Thank you!

Thank you for the review of this WS 618, if I decide to buy it it would be my first hooded nib. So glad you say it's a smooth and reliable writer as I don't collect pens for now, I just need reliable writers for notes, editing and writing. I trust your opinion. Thank you again!

Chris, you have sold me on this Wing Sung 618 with you very explicit demonstration. Did took note of your comment about a silver trimmed one over the gold and just placed an ebay order for a silver one. Can't wait to receive it. Keep these video clips coming.

Thank you, Chris. Wow. Almost the greatest hits of features in one pen.

Talk about a mashup pen! Very cool! I'm still amazed how well the Wing Sung 698 with 14K gold nib works. Easy to flex and the feed keeps up. One my favorites. Thanks for your reviews, the Wing Sung 618 is on the shopping list.

A real Parker "51" demonstrator is a rare item. This 618 seems like a good pen. It is good to see the Chinese pen makers moving away from the plastic bladder. Thank you for the review.

Wow is right that looks like an amazingly interesting pen , thanks for the review

Thanks to your videos I have bought three Chinese pens in the past two weeks haha. Moonman M2, Wing Sung 601 and now a 618 (transparent red with silver). Keep them coming!

Great video. I appreciate your appreciation of engineering and it's great to see Chinese manufacturing improve to this degree.

Another to add to my "to get" list. I'd spotted it from a vendor, so I checked it out for reviews. And lo and behold, this video popped up. Once again, Chris, thanks for the great review!

Fascinated by your review. Someone absolutely needs to do a definitive overhead view of every Chinese knock-off of the Parker 51, even if "knock-off" is perhaps unnecessarily harsh. I will say it is a beautiful pen, & in reference to one of your closing comments would add that Dollar Pens of Pakistan also makes a clear piston filler that they sell in sets for a ridiculously low price. Or at least they used to, maybe the price has gone up by now. I'll definitely be checking one of these out in the near future, thanks!

Fantastic review. Thanks!

Hi Chris, thank you for your great review. I received mine today. I got the silver one and the build quality is great (it does feel like precious resin!!). So basically this is a modern "51 Inspired design with a piston filler!!!". By the way, it's a lovely writer. Looking forward to watching many more of your awesome videos.

Really excellent review. Thanks for making this video.

Thanks for turning me on to the 618. Really enjoying your reviews including teardown, and your appreciation of engineering and build. I just received a blue transparent (reminiscent of 3776 chartes blue). Nib is fine, smooth, and wet. Although shape is Parker 51, all the way, I can't help but comparing shape/comfort to Lamy 2K. I guess the latter also somewhat copies Parker 51 in that regard. Compared with the classic cigar-shaped pens, I love this seamless and flowing (torpedo?) shape. Very comfortable in the hand.

I'm as impressed as you were; a tour de force. Was that the steel nib? I assume it was. Funny, in copying the Parker 51 but using a piston fill, the Wing Sung came out closer to the original Aurora 88. That's not a bad thing. Thanks Chris.

This pen is a very strange mix. I like the nib very much. Thanks to this video I have found out how to lock the piston and also get a better fill. Thank you. In the same postal delivery I also received a gunmetal coloured beautiful Jinhao 163 which is excellent. Two great pens in one day. The 163 will be for edc, the 618 will be in my '"novelty pen" section on my desk

Thank you for your great review! I’ll get it soon :-)

I have my eyes on this pen for a long time !!! But I was not sure whether to buy it or not. Now I know, to my next paycheck it is mine.

thanks for the amazing reviews chrisrap52 , just placed an order for both wingsung 618 and caliart's ego. do consider rereview after some weeks of usage like you did for jinhao 992's. keep up the great work.

so, this is an update(of sorts) from me, I watched this right after buying the 618. I now have three, This exact one, clear with gold, a red with silver, and a lack with gold. They're down to about $10 and change, so $10.50 for my most recent one. For someone who wants to try out a hooded nib, or a piston filler, cannot recommend them enough. They're amazing daily drivers, I'm waiting on some spare nibs for them so I can install or grind a small stub for a least one of them.

Just received mine today and also took note of what you said about the potential nib & feed and hood alignment issue. Had a play with it and found that you CAN line up the nib & feed with the hood. This is despite the hood having a fixed position when it bottoms out after being screwed onto the barrel. You overcome the problem by rotating the nib & feed as they do not have a fixed position in the grip section like some other make of pens. Hope that I explained this clearly and not cause more confusion. Will ink it up and expect the same performance Chris.

I was super impressed with this pen for the price.

I find the 618 to be a very VERY good pen. It makes a good partner to the 698 when I want to alternate between a traditional open nib and a hooded one. These both pretty much tick all the boxes for me.

Chrisrap52: I am very grateful to you for the 618 review! The Chinese instructions were of no value to me, and I would not have been able to figure out on my own some of the critical design features associated with the proper use of the pen!! Very valuable!!!

A pen pal loaned me one to try out. It is kind of cool. Not exactly a Parker 51, but still fun. And I like the locking piston. ETA: I had the same trouble getting the piston to lock in the maximum up location. Also, I let it sit for a week and it started up like a champ as well.

Wow indeed! This is a must-have on my list now. This combination, it being a demonstrator, a piston filler and it having a hooded cap might just very well make it the perfect office desk pen, since you have a lot of ink, have the ink level always neatly in sight, and shouldn't dry out easily even if left open. I am delighted! Unfortunately it is not directly available on German platforms, but the internet shall hear my call and help me, for sure! Sir, would it be all right to include the links to your purchases in the respective video? Maybe you don't want to advertise a specific seller too much, but if that's not your concern, you might help us quite a bit with such references!

Great review yet again, Chris! Curious to know which Chinese pens you find to be the most ergonomic/comfortable to use?

I have gotten my hands on one of the Wing Sung 618! Well, I got it ordered. I had to order it from a Seller on the US-eBay who ships from China and process it through my German eBay-account using the article reference number. A bit of a hassle, but it certainly works. I am even getting the one with silver / rhodium trim! I think I will actually give it a try and make a review of that pen myself, so you (all) can see how that pen specifically looks as well. I guess I do find your videos rather inspiring, indeed. Best wishes and please keep up presenting us such affordable pens of good quality!

Just spotted another verson of this 991 and looks like it has a hooded nib. On ebay it is called: JINHAO 991 Transparent blue Office finance Extra Fine nib fountain pen, for a blue colour and also comes in green and cleare. Jinhao are really lifting their game!

Did some scouring on ebay myself and came across a new pen. It a Jinhao 991 Transparent Matte Plastic Fountain Pen Cap Fine Nib 0.5mm. Photos on ebay looks like a snap cap with 4 detent tabs in the cap "clicking" into a groove in the grip section. Comes in six colours exactly like the 992. Will probably also come in the same six opaque 992 colours down the track.

It has ebonite feed which is amazing for a pen this price. Unfortunately ink channels are manually cut and on my pen there was a gap between two cuts and channel was not complete. I almost threw it away but then decided to cut the ink channel my self and now it writes well, although a bit on a wet side.

hi chris, it does come in silver trim, i've just ordered one. but i just checked with my seller and he's sold out of the silver trim but i saw loads on the canadian ebay, so they're out there somewhere ;) neil

Currently I'm testing the Jinhao 911, another Parker 51 homage pen. Metal cap and barell, plastic grip with the standard convertor inside. EF nib is an absolute delight. Falling in love with the no-nonsense shape of the 51. Seriously considering the clear 618 with silver details. But I also like EF nibs and I don't know of any 618s with it..

I just recieved my Wing Sung 618 today and it's very nice. The small band is nice and tight in my FP; there must have been a fix in production? mike aka atheusstarstuff

Noodler's actually carries some clear demonstrator piston fillers. The Konrad would probably be the closest to this one.

Great review of an amazing pen. Chinese pen designs and construction are moving from boring to innovative. Still waiting for some nib options, though. Thank you.

After using this pen for a week I can say this is my second Chinese pen that writes well, after Wing Sung 698. The only thing I would fault this pen for (apart from shameless stealing of other people's intellectual property) is that it is almost to easy to disassemble. If you over tighten the cap you may accidentally unscrew the grip section.

I just think Wing sung is on a massive roll here. I really hope they start using the pilot tooling to stamp gold nibs. a $45 gold nibbed 698 that actually swaps into a pilot steel nib would be AMAZING. As it is, the 698 has three flaws - the piston cap wiggles a TINY bit, not noticeable until you actually wiggle it, the clip is way too tight, and the cap doesn't post. I think if they fixed those issues they'd have what I would actually call a perfect pen in every way. (they could also add a M, B, and 1.0 stub too) This 618 has been on my radar since another viewer mentioned it on one of your videos. I'm waiting for my caliarts ego and delike brass pen (i also got a set of extra nibs, including a Fude bent nib, which might be interesting) and I also REALLY want the lingmo lorelei in dark green, so this will likely be 2 or 3 cheapie purchases away. Good call on mentioning the uprated plastic. I noticed that my 698 has been really, really tough. I've used it in the field for a couple weeks now and I am quite hard on pens, a lamy 2000 is one of the only pens that really takes the abuse, and the plastic on the wing sung pens is... really good. I would be curious to see the stress spectography that someone did on TWSBI plastic that showed why they cracked,, to see if this plastic is also formed in a stress free way or cooled too quickly like the TWSBI plastic used to be. If you're interested, I actually have 6 or so REALLY cheap chinese fountain pens including a hero 200a gold nib that I don't use, all currently for sale on ebay by hero, baoer, etc. If you're interested in seeing which ones are winners or not, I'd happily send them your way to review for free. A few are hooded steel nibs that are genuinely quite good, and the hero 200a is pretty solid as long as you don't push the nib (it springs instantly with any pressure)

Hi, Chris. I just ordered this identical clear demonstrator Wing Sung 618 a few days ago. I expect to receive it by the end of this month. Your detailed and illuminating review here only reassured me that I did well to choose this pen. I only wish it had a silver clip and accents instead of golden. One question springs to mind ,though. Do I need to apply silicone grease to the appropriate areas of this pen every time I disassemble the pen to clean it out? Does the 618 come with the grease included in the box? Or maybe I needn’t fret, because I seldom change inks in my pens. Funny to see how you filled yours with that attractive green ink. I had decided when ordering to buy the pen that I’d fill it with either my Diamine Sherwood Green or the Montblanc Irish Green ink. Next, I plan to get the WS 698. Watching your wonderful reviews here since July has sparked my interest in these inexpensive but attractive and well-made Chinese pens. I’m keen to buy and use a few I fancy already.

The most important thing I think you should do for each of these cheap pens is whether or not they dry out. That's kind of a huge point where so many chinese pens fail on. Thusfar, my 698 hasn't dried out at all, but a number of my cheap chinese pens are just awful, including the jinhao 159 is just super prone to drying out and being hard to start if left for a few days unused

So Chris, I noticed the Wing S 618 received 2 WOW's from you. Would you say it's performance as a writer exceeds the 698, the Jinhao 992 & the Caliarts by a factor of 2? Or is it the engineering refinements that impressed? Seems to me that they all write more or less the same? I have the Wing S 698, which I just love! Thank you.

Chris, I am really enjoying your videos and find them fascinating. I think you are filling a niche not covered by other fountain pen You Tubers. I am always tempted to update my e-bay account and start ordering some of the pens you review but then I stop and pause. Not always, I do have a handful of JinHaos and while they do write smoothly, they do have a problem with cracking at the plug. I am also not real fond of clear demonstrators. I realize I am in the minority in that. I do have 2 other concerns, however. One is the ethical issue of buying very cheap pens that are really just of copy of a pen from an established company, such as Sailor. I am somewhat concerned that these pens could only be made in China outside of traditional copyright protections (I'm no lawyer so I could be wrong about that). Brian Goulet has mentioned this issue and has indicated that there are models of Jin Hao he will not carry.My other issue is I am undecided wether to buy a lot of cheap pens or just 1 or 2 really good ones a year: I am leaning towards the later. Finally, I think I heard somewhere that one of these Chinese companies, Baoer, Wing Sun, Jin Hao who are working out of an old Parker factory. Have you heard anything like that? Thanks again for your interesting videos, keep up the good work.

Jlk Great review

No way! Great Parker 51 inspired looking pen! I read it has a small sweet spot, but I still want to give this a try. What do you think or anyone think about the sweet spot? I was thoroughly impressed by the WS 698 and am as surprised to see this kind of package for this price.

Couldn't help but notice, while watching this video clip again, that Wing Sung have turned the corner with their naming convention of their new range of quality pens. They are adopting the never used before three digit "6 Series" in their models - 698, 659 and now the 618, ala mimicking Boeing with their "7 Series" naming of their aircrafts...heh heh :-). Just waiting on what the next Wing Sung 6## pen is going to be???? BTW your are spot on about the clip of the Caliarts Ego as I carry mine in my shirt pocket and is by far the easiest of all my pens to retrieve, use and store. It is one of six pens (the Wing Sung 698 & 659 are 2 of them) that I rotate as my daily use. It would tend to sway me in using it more than the rest because of the ease of carrying it. As Wing Sung is on a constant improvement of their product, they could perhaps look into redesigning the clip of their pens, one can only hope.

How has this pen held up after a year? I’ve heard of cracking issues with the jinhao 992 (and among other models) so it’s of interest to know if that’s also an issue with this one, or if the higher price point and better quality plastic has resolved that? I’m also interested in anything else deteriorating after a year or so of use? Thanks!

Chinese are really upping the game. I was looking for a pen like this for a while but apart from Vintage Aurora 88 there is nothing like this available.

Chris, I fear my comments may have been made with a tone more critical or adversarial than I had intended. I was simply trying to point out some concerns for purposes of discussion relating to Chinese pens. My comments were at best inelegant, and, at least in this case, not my worst assault on the Queen's English. I have been guilty of far worse rhetorical transgressions. After seeming to come down on your views, I actually ordered one of this pens from China. It has not yet arrived but I looking forward to receiving it. It is a transparent blue: I hold my ground on clear demonstrators! My best wishes.

Do you remember what ink you were using in this pen? I really like that green!

What size nib does it use if you what to change it?

I like the pen: design and construction are excellent, but nib (in my pen and even that I bought from eBay as replacement) and feed are mediocre. Any suggestion for a better nib?

The black one has a reverse threaded blind cap so care is needed when disassembling the pen. I cracked the barrel turning it the wrong way from what I can see, maybe it was like that when I got it, not sure.

Chris, are you having any problems with the pen at this point? Mine appears to fill the hood/feed section after drawing ink but after it gets used up in writing it struggles to refill from the reservoir. This greatly affects how wet the nib is for me. Any ideas on how to fix this?

I'm having trouble finding the caliart pen. Can you point me in the right direction?

When I try to flush out the piston filler wing sung 618... I feel heavy pressure while screwing outwards...is this common among piston fillers ? Any idea how to fix it ? I heard some crack noises while forcing it . Can u share ur thoughts ?

Have you had any cracking on your twisbi pen

What pen are you comparing it with at around 16:07? Thanks in advance.

In the video @ 8:37 you show the wrapper. Google visual translate decodes this to "eternal life piston pen user's guide". That's a bold statement for a piston. ;-)

has anyone confirmed what nibs fit in this pen as replacements? I have a 618 but want to replace the nib if possible.. even with another wing sung 618 nib but I dont know where to buy just a nib.

Looks like it would make a better eyedropper?

I just got my pen yesterday. First, thank you for explaining the locking mechanism on the piston filler knob. I was unscrewing the whole system. The instructions are less than helpful. I really am enjoying the pen so far. Great ink capacity.

thank you for your review. is the pen has any issue now?

Is that pen's nib can be connected with parker 51?

how does it writes in reverse? does it smooth?

Do you still think it is worth a double WOW? It looks like a great pen.

Why does China block the reviews?

It looked like it wrote like medium fine. Would you say that's accurate?

Can you please suggest me a fountain pen for school

ok pen, I have it. The lower Pilot fountain pens are better.

I make a conscious effort to not subsidize anything in and from China.

It's just a shame that a pen with so many attractive features, that even advertises itself with a Chinese name and "MADE IN CHINA" plainly stamped on the pen, STILL feels the need to 100% rip off Parker's trademarked arrow clip, as if to both try to fool customers and their credulous friends and coworkers into thinking it's a Parker, while also immediately dispelling that notion. It's like making a knockoff Rolex with both the Rolex name and logo and "MADE IN CHINA" printed right underneath on the watch dial. It just doesn't make sense. Considering the generally high quality and value of these Chinese pens, I really wish they would just alter the designs a little and be their own thing. Americans have been buying Chinese products to the tune of trillions of dollars a year for over 40 years. Virtually all of our clothes and maybe 60% of literally everything we buy is made in China, so it's not like there's any shame in writing with a Chinese pen. I wish this whole Chinese knockoff obsession would end so that we can enjoy some actual ingenuity and inspiration from Chinese engineers and designers who want to show us their own originality.