My wife and I absolutely love Monte Blanc, for their Fountain pens, Inks, leather and luxury goods. They are wonderful products and add a great deal to both our lives.
That being said, I would never, ever, buy electronics from them. They simply aren't an electronics company. You wouldn't buy a fountain pen or leather bag from Sony and expect it to be a premium product would you?
I’d expect it to be mediocre quality, not an outright scam. Legitimate businesses don’t randomly decide to run a scam, so the fact that Mont Blanc did it here makes me strongly suspect we’re just not seeing how they do it elsewhere. Maybe you like their products, but are you familiar enough with the competition to know that you shouldn’t be getting more or paying less?
Absolutely do. My wife and I regularly attend pen shows, own many different brands of pens not just monte blanc pens, in fact monte blanc are the minority in our collection.
In the fountain pen world Monte Blanc is like Rolex or Tag is to the watch world. One od the foundational brands of the genre.
My personal favorites are waterman just because during highschool this was my favorite tool to write. The one I had at that time was expensive for me at that time ;)
They make very nice pens, a few others to check out besides Waterman and Monte Blanc would be Sailor, Pilot, Carolina pen company, Kweco, I'm sure I'm missing lots...
Same here. Have a nice Chopin Mont Blanc fountain pen. 2 starwalkers a rollerbal and pencil. I have some leather good stuff too. I would never ever buy electronics from them. Heck I won't even buy anything else besides pens and leather goods from them...
Irrespective of whether a company is expert or not in a particular domain, they can choose (independently) whether their policy is to engage in customer-unfriendly business practices.
My wife is a calligrapher. To a calligrapher or artist is like a baton is to a conductor, a Stradivarius to a violin player, a classic Gibson to a guitar player.
So yes, to many people an expensive guitar is just a status symbol, to a true artist it's something that adds a great deal to their lives.
It's the same here, my wife and I aren't lawyers, doctors or politicians, these pens aren't status symbols. These pens are used for creative pursuits, to design, art. Many of them are vintage classic pens that have deep history, family value, etc.
Just because you value certain things in your life, doesn't mean that others don't value other things.
if you ever write a lot with pens then using a Fountain pen is a dream to write with on good paper. I always used to get a cramped hand from using rollerball pens, gels were a bit better but not much.
Tried a Lamy Safari, a "cheap" for fountain pens at least (23 euros), and I have never looked back. I love writing by hand now, and take every opportunity to do so. It's just so much more fun writing when your thoughs can just slide out from your hand on to paper.
Daily drivers are my Lamy Aion (a 80Euro pen)with my Safari as a backup.
This will sound silly but I don't understand the appeal of expensive watches. I can understand collecting or being interested in unique ones... but to an untrained eye (me) its hard to tell the difference between expensive and "fancy" ones.
At least with cars, you know when one is a sports car or expensive lol
I used to think the same thing but got into watches a few years ago and feel equipped to answer this. A few reasons:
1) The mechanisms. It's just cool. Many of us on HN are engineers — wristwatches and time-keeping more broadly is one of the most classic, widespread forms of engineering. It's a form of engineering that has been around for a millennia, and it's fun to have something on your wrist, full of tiny gears with a satisfying subtle noise when held up to your ear, that can keep time to around 1-2 seconds a day with the 86,400 seconds in each day.
2) The history. There's so much to find that's unique. One of my favorite watches is the Doxa Sub300 in orange, it was the favorite of Jacques Cousteau who inspired so many of us with regards to diving (invented Scuba) and the ocean in general through his documentaries. Many of these brands have so much interesting history down to each model along with admirable craftsmanship. Some people like models that look like out-of-normality for a brand, like "oh wow can you believe Rolex did THAT?", e.g. a pulsation dial for a doctor to measure someone's heart-rate, while some like the classic model that exemplifies everything about the brand.
3) The accessory. As men, we don't typically have the amount of jewelry that women do, or the ability to wear the same wide range of dress. Watches are that thing where we can show off some aspect of our personality, of who we are or who we want to be, whether that's classy and subtle, fun and unusual, or even ostentatious.
4) The bonding. This is a smaller thing, but when you're into watches, and you meet someone else out in the wild who is as well, you have the best conversations. It's this thing you mutually geek out over, and it's incredibly pure. It's a great feeling, it's like finding someone who roots for the same sports team as you in some random city abroad.
Why expensive? In points 1 and 2, the expensive watches are the ones with the best mechanisms and the best history. In point 4, the expensive watch is the one that signals that you really care about watches, because it epitomizes 1 and 2. :)
They're status symbols. As with most things in life, the quality isn't necessarily reflected by the price. "A fool and their money" et cetera. Cash circulating is a good thing, and provides jobs, even if the products they make are objectively not any better than x.
Wearing a brand that no normal person would identify makes no sense as a "status symbol".
Any Joe Average knows a Ferrari when he sees it, but he's not going to look twice if the guy standing next to him in the Starbucks queue is wearing a Lange & Söhne wristwatch.
Who says it's for Joe Average? I have an Artemide Tizio lamp designed by Richard Sapper, Joe Average won't appreciate it, but anybody with a little appreciation for industrial design will at least appreciate what it is even if they've never seen one before, and maybe that's something I'd like to bond with someone over as an enormous lover of Sapper's designs.
They're "status symbols" in as much as if someone turns up to a meeting with x pen or y watch, I recognize the value of those things, I think maybe they are successful. Maybe they're also counterfeit, stolen, or what they have to say has no merit, but they do like toys and can't think of anything better to spend their money on. Either way, it's a prop, just like someone's nice suit is a prop, just like their luxury car is a prop.
Can someone see through the bullshit? Of course. But in some circles, bullshit is all there is and the props are a crutch for having nothing of value to say or contribute, i.e., they can't possibly be wrong, or worse yet, ineffective, after all they turned up in the German car with a nice suit and nice pen.
Spoiler: I love Casio watches, specifically the cheapo G-Shocks. I have an Omega and a Breitling, but the G-Shocks get all my loving. The brand isn't what counts for me, the design is everything.
Why would you buy a watch from them anyway? It's really lame business practise, but hardly surprising from a "luxury" brand. The good news is that there aren't proprietary electrons yet so if you can get something that fits and gives the right voltage you should be fine.
The good news is that there aren't proprietary electrons yet so if you can get something that fits and gives the right voltage you should be fine.
The battery maker is under NDA, I'm sure Mont Blanc made sure you're not going to find something on AliExpress.
And, yeah, I hate to blame the victim here, but who buys high-tech electronics from a maker of...fountain pens? (And maker of fine fragrances, too. sigh)
Relative to what you can buy from other more reputable brands for a similar price point, it's actually not great. Nib usually needs work due to poor QC, they creak, and they're just generally a lacking experience. I'm also not endorsing spending a grand on a mass-produced pen, but there's a sensible middle ground of not buying junk nor overpaying for something that doesn't enhance your writing experience. Equally, price isn't a reliable indicator of quality.
Yes, the Jinhao's of the fountain pen market make pretty decent pens, but that's not a fair comparison. That's like saying a Timex and a Rolex both tell time just as well, so why does Rolex exist?
It's actually a good watch. Vanilla WearOS and a nice design. A crown that let's you navigate and it's made out of titanium with sapphire glass.
I have a battery that fits but the connector is different. It is too small for me to replace and the risk of destroying the connector in a such tiny flex pcb is very high.
Is it? It's a grand, and it isn't repairable once the battery goes. I'd say that's a pretty shitty smartwatch (not priced to be disposable), and an even worse general watch.
I wasn't aware of that. I didn't want an apple watch and the other android watches all felt cheap. I also didn't want to spend what a TAG Heuer Connected would cost (which I believe has much better service). Yes, CHF 1000 is a lot but compared to an iPhone or a Samsung Fold which I do not own, I didn't see this watch as being too crazy.
After the shenanigans I have experienced with my 2017 MacBook Pro (screen connector failure not warrantied on the 15”, premature battery failure, and obvs the butterfly keyboard) I’ve resolved to never buy another Apple laptop.
Assuming the 16” Framework stacks up, that’s where my money will go - I like (very much) all that they’re trying to do.
what many rollerball users dont know is that you can take a Mont Blanc roller ball refill, which is by most rollerball users considered to be one of the best rollerball writing experiences, and place it in a Pilot G2 with out any issue.
You could also do this with a fountain pen buy buying a gold Diplomat 149 replacement nib and put on a Jinhao 159 Mont Blanc "homage pen" (pirate copy).
and use mont blanc ink in that pen. Gold Nibs are not cheap but they are about 150-200 usd, but when a pen could easily be 1000-10000 usd in the extreme high end then that's a bargain https://www.instagram.com/p/ChJSq-Iv6HE/
Why would you do this?
Because some people like to have good writing tools without paying an extra premium.
The Mont Blanc inks are all hype, IMO, as is pretty much everything they sell by modern standards since the acquisition and treatment of it like a luxury brand in the '90s rather than focusing on innovating in tools. Plenty of other decent inks for less. It's like saying Tiffany makes great jewellery and has great quality stones because the pricing is high.
The Jinhao 159 is creaky junk and buying it supports the CCP. As with the ink, it's people kidding themselves that just because Mont Blanc charges x for y then that must make x somehow special and worth having in 2023. For the same price point, you can do much better, and probably even go Japanese-made, and not support the CCP.
It's a century later, with modern manufacturing techniques, don't you think someone can do better than a Meisterstuck or Meisterstuck clone?
That being said, I would never, ever, buy electronics from them. They simply aren't an electronics company. You wouldn't buy a fountain pen or leather bag from Sony and expect it to be a premium product would you?