For all of the love the Rotring 600 gets (rightfully so,) The Pentel GraphGear 1000 is right up there in terms of quality, style, and performance. I grabbed an 0.5 mm Colors Edition in Pink from a recent Yoseka Stationery purchase, which was designed to freshen up the classic looks of the GraphGear. Read the rules below and enter away!
Posts filed under Pentel
Pentel Ain Stein 0.3 mm H Mechanical Pencil Lead Review
Ain Stein Lead is Pentel’s foray into hi-grade mechanical pencil lead. Most of the big mechanical pencil companies have this type of offering, with a basic lead for mass consumption, followed by a more feature-rich, pricier, lead.
This level of lead is where the marketing takes off. Each company has their own formula as to why their lead is bigger, better, faster, and stronger, and the Pentel Ain Stein is no different. To wit: STEIN stands for "Strongest Technology by Enhanced SiO2 Integrated Network.”
Me too Barack. Me too.
That said, the marketing is easy to ignore if the product is good. And this case it is. I might even say it is great for my own personal use.
As fond as I am of 0.3 mm gel ink pens, that love generally does not translate to mechanical pencils. Leads in that size are either generally fragile, or so firm (to combat the fragility) that they are too light on the page. The Ain Stein 0.3 mm H solves both of those problems for me.
I could tell this lead was going to be good as soon as I loaded it into my Alvin Draft/Matic 0.3 mm Mab Graves special edition. For starters, I didn’t snap the stick when pulling it from the lead holder and sliding it into the back of the pencil. That’s a huge win for leads this tiny! Secondly, it was darker and firmer that I thought it would be when I started writing with it.
That is exactly what I want when writing with an 0.3 mm pencil. This size has made me gun-shy in the past, thinking I would snap it on contact, but not the Ain Stein 0.3 mm H.
What sealed the deal for me with this lead was doing something I never, ever do: Write notes in a moving car. And no, I wasn’t driving! My family and I took a quick road trip this weekend, and with my wife behind the wheel, I took the opportunity to lay out the upcoming week in my planner and chose this pencil and lead setup to do so.
You would think the bouncing and shaking of the car hurtling down the highway would break the lead every time the tip hit the page. It didn’t. Not even once. This was far from a controlled environment, as my shaky handwriting can attest to, and the 0.3 mm H lead handled it perfectly. I’m surprised I even tried it, and even more surprised it worked so flawlessly.
If I’m not sold after that performance then I don’t know what else I’m looking for in a stick of graphite. The Pentel Ain Stein 0.3 mm H will be my 0.3 mm mechanical pencil lead of choice.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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Pentel Super Hi-Polymer 0.5 mm 2B Lead Review
Over the years, one of the things I’ve discovered that I am good at is turning the most basic, boring stationery products into fun stationery reviews. I find it easy because I care about this stuff on a (probably) unhealthy level, and enjoy talking about the minutia around each and every product.
I also think I’m good at it because I lived it. I grew up using many of these products in the 70’s and 80’s, and it is a testament to many of them that they are still around and thriving, like Pentel’s standard mechanical pencil lead - the Super Hi-Polymer.
If you have been into mechanical pencils, or even stationery as a whole, you have seen the classic, clear, diamond-shaped lead holder that Pentel uses for this product lineup. It is as ubiquitous as the Pentel Sharp P-Series mechanical pencil that is often paired with it. If fact, did you know the P-Series pencil barrels are color coded by lead size, and the caps of the lead holders are colored to match the pencil barrels? Well, now you do.
Another thing Pentel does within the Super Hi-Polymer lineup is offer then in a huge range of hardnesses - 12 by my count on the 0.5 mm product page. This variety was mind-blowing to young me when shopping at the campus bookstore, even though I wasn’t brave enough to test any of the far end of the scale ones out at the time.
Top Secret, for Pentel internal use only, Paper Straw Holder edition.
I am now, and even though this 2B graphite isn’t far past the middle, the quality of the product is as good now as it was back then.
My preconceived notion was that 2B would be too soft for me for regular use, but that hasn’t been the case at all. It is soft and dark - as it should be - but the point retention has been better than expected. I think I only extended the lead once on my written review page. My lines were tighter than I expected, too.
Although this lead isn’t “The One,” I am compelled by how much I like it versus how much I thought I would like it. That makes me anxious to try two things: The firmer side of the scale in the Super Hi-Polymer lineup, and Pentel’s higher end Ain Stein graphite lineup, which features long words about how special it is. Since none of the other fancy-named leads haven’t blown me away, maybe Pentel holds the key to what I am looking for in this experiment.
(Pentel provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
