Venvstas hits 2.0 with the carbon fiber Magna piston

I can’t fault Venvstas’s persistence. After I heavily criticised the first Magna piston, this fiery Italian brand took my comments on the chin and came back stronger with the Magna CC, which I really liked: it had much better fit and finish, and the use of the converter both improved serviceability and filling, and fixed a couple of significant bugs (more on that in a bit).

Now they’ve sent me a revised version of the Magna Piston, the V2.0, which is just hitting the market on preorder for 269 euros. Let’s see if it continues to move Venvstas in the right direction.

To recap, this is a pen like nothing else you’ll see, both in aesthetics and construction.

It’s a 12mm diameter tube of linear carbon fiber, sliced into three segments: a short piece with a flat branded brass disc on one end and steel mating tube serves as the cap.

The middle section has the meat of the pen fixed into it by two tiny screws.

And the third, longest piece slides over the mechanism from the rear to serve as a kind of barrel.

The internals form a piston filler and a nib unit: titanium #6 nib, plastic feed; titanium ‘tank’ with a plastic shaft and knob at the other end. The piston is a push-pull design. Although the mechanism is fixed with screws in various places, the design is not intended to be user serviceable.

Branding is relatively subtle. Aside from the brass disc on the end of the cap, and an engraved V on the nib, you’ll only see branding in the form of laser-engraved text hidden away.

Pull off the cap and you’ll find ‘Made in Italy’ and a serial number on the cap liner; pull off the barrel and you’ll find ‘Magna Piston 2.0’ on the piston tank.

Turning the Magna in the hand it’s like an alien artifact. It’s long, slim, with weird diagonal slices across it revealing titanium beneath. Aside from the cylinder itself, there are no curves here at all, no adornment, and none of the conventional fountain pen features like screw threads. There are few concessions to practicality, either: no clip to serve as a rollstop, no ink window.

To write with, though, it’s a delight. The carbon fiber is warm in the hand, and there are no steps or bumps to disrupt the grip. Although long, the Magna is not a heavy pen and it’s beautifully balanced. The Titanium nib is well tuned and, if you like the character of Ti, performs really well.

Although I’ve only been testing this version of the Magna for a couple of weeks, it also seems to be a reliable workhorse. The piston gets a good fill on the first go, and there’s no leaking, burping or other bad behaviour. The cap seals very well and there’s no drying out at all.

However, I have a few gripes.

A couple of those gripes are intrinsic to the design — Venvstas even calls them out on the pen’s product page.

Most dangerously, the push-pull piston knob is exposed even when the barrel sleeve is installed. I believe the open-ended construction is intended to make it easy to post the cap, but I know of no other pen that leaves its filler unsecured like this.

You can push the end of the piston in maybe 4-5mm due to the slash-cut barrel, potentially squirting ink into the cap (or all over yourself). This is a very real risk when you, say, shove the Magna down into a pen sleeve or a pocket.

Further, the nib end of the pen has multiple overlapping layers, needed for the capping mechanism. If you gleefully insert the nib into a bottle of ink to fill with the piston, you can and will get ink trapped in these layers, and even if you grub around with some kitchen roll you won’t get it all out. From previous disassembly of the V1.0 Magna, ink makes its way down way inside the pen.

Instead, the ink will come out over time as you cap and uncap the pen, potentially getting on your hands or clothes. I can see why Venvstas went for this design, because it results in a threadless and stepless appearance. But it’s frustrating.

I want to call these flaws out for a couple of reasons: first, I had the same damn issues with v1 of the Magna, and they haven’t been addressed at all; second, they are both totally avoided by the Magna CC, with its converter filler — which also, incidentally, gives you an ink window as a bonus.

I had a few other niggles.

The ‘overlapping curves’ design at the nib end triggered me massively.

To my eye not all of the elements (nib, metal layer, carbon layer) are perfectly aligned — although nowhere near as badly as on my first Magna. But due to the construction of the pen there’s no way to realign any of the parts. The position of the screw holes is fixed.

The carbon fiber is not perfectly finished. There are some marks that may be down to the initial forming of the materials, but other marks are clearly down to slips in hand-sanding.

The finish blemishes are unfortunate. This is defiantly a handmade pen, proudly cut from a single tube of CF with a diamond saw, but it’s not a rustic design where you expect to see evidence of handiwork. It’s carbon fiber and titanium, and I associate those materials with high-tech manufacturing processes where the output is consistent and perfect.

The barrel sleeve is VERY tight on my sample. It doesn’t scrape or grind, but you have to use a lot of effort to slide it on or off, and it doesn’t seem to have loosened much in the 10 or 20 times I’ve done it so far.

This may be intentional: on the v1 Magna I sometimes pulled the barrel off when trying to uncap the pen; now it’s too stiff for that to happen. Certainly the cap tension is spot on this time, quick yet not loose.

So.

For all the ‘v2’ moniker, the Venvstas Magna Piston is still not perfect. In fact, I’m pretty frustrated that no effort seems to have gone into fixing the known v1 flaws beyond putting a warning on the product page. I still prefer the CC version I received to review, which not only had perfect finishing, but avoided the fundamental flaws of the unconventional piston mechanism (trapped ink, no ink window, accidental discharge).

All that said, the Magna Piston 2.0 is still a pen I like very much. There is nothing else out there that hits all of its unique features: warm carbon fiber body with no step; minimal long, featureless design with excellent balance; quick slip cap (which seals well); branded titanium nib (which writes well) — and that high capacity in-house push/pull piston. This is a pen that I simply enjoy writing with, and furthermore when I’m in a meeting and need to grab a pen, it’s so convenient to pick the Magna.

And a last point, on value. At 269 euros, with an in-house piston and a titanium nib, the Venvstas Magna not only gives you something unique in your pen tray, it does so at around a third of the price of a titanium-nibbed Conid Regular, and not far above steel-nibbed piston fillers like the Leonardo Magico.

Go in with your eyes open to the Magna’s flaws and you’ll find a pen that charms much more than it frustrates.

I was sent this pen to review by Venvstas. You can get yours here: https://www.venvstas.com/product-page/magna-m1