Asvine Hongdian Fountain Pen Bottled Ink Black, 60ml Fountain Pen Bottled Ink, Non Carbon

This is a really good and underrated black ink. Its a nice deep dark black color.Of the 12 black inks I’ve tested, this is probably tied for 2nd or 3rd darkest. It may be difficult to tell in the picture, but its pretty clear in person. The darkest black is Cross Black. 2nd is a toss up between Noodler’s X Feather, Kaweco Black Pearl, and Hongdian non carbon Black. Kaweco Black Pearl has a cool color temperature in some lighting conditions, X Feather seems neutral, and so does Hongdian non carbon Black.This Hongdian non carbon Black has good flow and is fairly smooth. It was well behaved on both ends of the nib spectrum – 1.9 Stub nib on one end (which is what I used in the picture for all of the writing samples), and a really tight Extra Fine nib on the other.I would put the amount of time it takes to dry in the medium range. It takes about 20 seconds to dry when using the 1.9 stub nib, which isn’t too bad since it puts down a lot of ink. It only takes about a second to a second and a half when using the Extra Fine nib.It has pretty good water resistance, but its not as good as Noodler’s X Feather in that regard. This leads to the one thing I don’t like about this ink, which is that it turns purple when it gets wet. That is a minor pet peave of mine when dealing with black inks. I really prefer that they stay on the gray scale when they get wet. When cleaning out nibs or cartridge converters, this ink will turn a very deep purple when coming into contact with water and turns a nice light purple as it gets more diluted. When getting wet on paper, purplish color will come up off of the page first, but the color that remains on the page it still black, or sometimes charcoal gray depending on how much ink lifted off when it got wet.This ink is a great value and a real sleeper as far as black inks go. It will be in my regular rotation along with Noodler’s X Feather and Cross Black (if I can ever find a bottle of it). Its also the least expensive of those 3.For what its worth, Kaweco Black Pearl is also pretty good except it has poor water resistance and doesn’t flow for crap out of Extra Fine nibs. Hard Starts are the norm, and skipping isn’t out of the question, which is why it won’t be in my rotation once I am done with my cartridges. I haven’t had any flow issues with it out of my stub nibs, but I need a black ink that works in Fine and Extra Fine nibs as well.