Montverde Ritma

I recently gave props to the Benu Briolette, probably the best pen I’ve ever written with. But sometimes we also have to talk about bad pen experiences. Such was mine with the Montverde Ritma, a pen that, whilst at about half the price of the Briolette, is still not a cheap pen, and which Montverde markets as quite a high-end writing experience.

Unfortunately I found the pen to be terrible. It doesn’t necessarily write poorly, but its nib-paper interaction is exceedingly rough, and some of my less durable paper has been torn by the point. On good paper, the pen does write consistently, with few or no hard starts.

The pen also has a nearly unusable grip. Over-wide with little differentiation in size or shape from the pen body, it’s hard to position my hand or maintain a grip for long without rest or repositioning. The grip is also a hard, cold metal that exacerbates the already excessive fatigue of writing with this pen.

Finally, the pen is heavy. I find it unnecessarily weighted and this makes the rough paper feedback worse. I’ve also never met a pen grip that was too big for my hand, and that made me crave something more ergonomic or plush. I usually want the opposite. But this is one pen that just wasn’t made for me.