In this video I run a long-term “dry out” test on retractable fountain pens — from super budget options up to the big names — to see what still writes after being left inked in a pen tray. I inked a stack of pens with Monteverde Blue Black (it’s a solid, simple ink with ITF tech that’s meant to help with drying out), did a quick writing sample, and then left them alone. The whole point here is the promise of capless convenience: different pens use different sealing mechanisms, and I wanted to see what that actually means in real life. A couple of weeks in, I did a check-in and, honestly, most of the pens were already dead on arrival — you can see the scratchy “trying to start” marks on the page. The only two that wrote relatively cleanly at that point were the Lamy Dialog CC and the Pilot Vanishing Point (Capless). I then made an executive decision to clean out the rest and leave only those two inked for the full stretch. At the four-month mark (Sydney summer, so take that into account), even the Dialog CC and the Vanishing Point had dried out — converters dried, no start. So the takeaway is pretty simple: if you’re leaving retractable fountain pens untouched for months, you should probably clean them anyway. For normal use (days, even a bit longer), plenty of these can be fine — but four months is too long across the board in my experience here.