A while ago I reviewed the Jinhao 10, a budget-friendly retractable fountain pen in the style of the Pilot Vanishing Point. I was really impressed with the quality and performance of the pen for the price, so when I saw the Jinhao 20, I didn’t hesitate to buy it.

The Jinhao 20 is Jinhao’s answer to the Pilot Decimo, a smaller, lighter and slimmer retractable fountain pen. It comes in a huge array of colours, and has three different options for the metal trim: gold, silver and rose gold. I chose the Jinhao 20 in Celestial Jade with silver trim, and it’s so pretty! The light green body of the pen is slightly transparent, so you can see the inner workings of the pen, and there’s some subtle silver sparkle throughout. 

It has the same smooth writing experience as the Jinhao 10 (it’s the same nib unit after all, so completely interchangeable with the Jinhao 10, and also any of the Pilot Capless pens), but the body of the pen is smaller and slimmer, and significantly lighter. 

You can see the size difference with the Jinhao 10 in the photo above, and below you can see how it compares to the pen it’s modelled after, the Pilot Decimo: they’re basically the same size, but the Jinhao 20 feels lighter. 

As with the Jinhao 10, I was surprised by how similar the Jinhao 20 feels to the writing experience of the Pilot Decimo, as it has the same buttery smoothness to it. After using it for a couple of weeks I’ve had no hard starts or skipping, but I did find it had the same problem as the Jinhao 10, in that I don’t think the sealing mechanism is particularly airtight. It certainly isn’t comparable to the Pilot Decimo in that area.

It never completely dried out, but if left for a couple of days unused, I did find the first couple of lines of writing would be significantly darker than it should have been, implying there had been some evaporation. I purposefully put a lighter ink in the pen (Robert Oster Cosmic Swirl) to test this out, as all three of my Jinhao 10s had this problem, but unfortunately it hasn’t been fixed in this newer model of pen, which is disappointing. 

It’s a shame Jinhao’s retractable pens have this weakness, as otherwise I think they’re incredible value for money. The Jinhao 20 is even more inexpensive than the Jinhao 10, costing only £10.99 on Amazon, which for the writing experience you get, is amazing. I definitely think this would be a great buy for anyone who wants to try out retractable fountain pens but doesn’t have the budget or doesn’t want to spend the higher amount for the Pilot Vanishing Point or Decimo. Because of the price this is also a great pen to just throw in your bag without you having to worry about losing it. 

So have you tried the Jinhao 20? What do you think of it?