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| My Uni Kuru Toga and My/Mon Mini Journal |
It's been ages since I reviewed anything, but that doesn't mean I'm not constantly trying out new products. Mechanical pencils are always an iffy proposition for me, though. I don't own many because I am so picky about them. I looked through a pencil blogs, and it seems that most are focused on the wooden pencil. The mechanical pencil reviews are isolated in their own mechanical and draft pencil blogs. I love that there's a blog out there for everything!
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| Photo from Jetpens.com |
My baby pink Uni Kuru Toga is the cutest pencil I've ever owned. Look at that tip - the shiny chrome look moves up to the pink edging which continues on smoothly to the clear plastic cover that shows off the rotating mechanism. This visible portion of the rotating mechanism is orange and white, but I think it might only be for decorative purposes to differentiate it from other pencils because I can't actually see anything happening. The eraser cap is pink and slightly see-thru. The pencil is very smooth in my hands, but my guess is that if I carried it out and about instead of just leaving it on my work desk, it would probably lose some of the extra smoothness. I would have liked the pencil name on the white clip to have matched either the pink of the body or the pink that's down by the pencil tip, but truthfully, I didn't even notice that they didn't match until I sat down to review the pencil. One thing this pencil is missing is a cap over the sharp tip. I've ruined more sweaters by putting pencils like this in my pocket then snagging yarn on the sharp point as I pull the pencil from my pocket.
The gray pencil has a blue ring where the hot pink ring is at the tip, you can't really see the mechanism clearly through the gray plastic shell, and the eraser cover is dark blue and almost see-thru. While the pink pencil is adorable, the gray one is very plain with simple. The pink looks more expensive, too, but I can't figure out why I think that.
BUT HOW'S IT WRITE?
I've only used this pencil with HB (hard) lead: the Uni .5 HB lead that came with it and the Pentel Ain Stein .5 HB lead. Pentil Ain Stein had good reviews, so I picked it up, and until today I didn't really notice any difference than with the other leads I've used. Taking a look in my desk drawer, I see that's because the third lead I own (BIC) is also HB, and I don't really know enough to differentiate between leads. However, when I filled my gray pencil with the Pentil Ain Stein and left the Uni HB in the pink to test the different leads, I discovered that I have a slight preference for the Uni lead. It seemed to write more smoothly, although they both are working well with the pencil and not causing any problems or difficulties. I have no idea if the fact that it's a Uni pencil and Uni lead makes a difference.
The rotating mechanism definitely keeps my point sharper. It doesn't keep it "new lead" sharp, but the lines never become as thick as standard non-rotating pencil lead becomes when you don't rotate the pencil in your hand.
Here's the thing with the rotating mechanism: I still have to advance my lead. I had thought my gray pencil was a non-rotating Uni pencil because ads say that the rotating lead means you don't need to advance it yourself. When I bought my pink pencil I realized that I was also advancing lead. To see if it was how I write I asked a coworker to use my pink pencil for a week,. When she returned it, she told me that she never had to advance the lead. The rotating mechanism took care of that for her. My assumption is that this is because I write very quickly, to the point that I sometimes I have trouble reading over notes from meetings that happened a month or two ago. I have noticed that I need to advance the lead far less often than with standard rotating lead mechanical pencils.
BREAKAGE
The lead breaks far less often in my Uni Kuru Toga pencils than it does in other brands of mechanical pencils. I'm assuming that's because the rotating mechanism keeps the pencil from becoming very dull, and thus sharper and being rotated, which for me leads to frustration and my writing harder and slamming the pencil down. I'm also guessing it's because I start with a far less advanced lead than I do with other mechanical pencils. I don't have to continually click the lead out on my rotating lead pencil, so I don't feel the need to click it out as far as possible.
Less breaking is huge for me because I prefer a super fine point pencil but really do press too hard. I tested a Retro 51 Tornado Crossword 1.15mm pencil at a Sarnoffs in Tucson, and it was amazing. However, I can't come up with any reason to ever purchase myself a luxury pencil like that. It's gorgeous, but it lays such a thick line that I can't imagine what I'd ever use it for. I doubt that thinck lead breaks much, though!
ERASER
The erasers that came with this pencil are exceptional. I have other eraser refills in my desk from my other pencils, but I'm probably going to purchase the refills sold specifically for this pencil because they erase that well. However, this could be the age of the erasers - I've only had the gray pencil since February and the pink pencil since May. My erasers aren't used often, and dried out or dirty erasers just make a mess. The eraser cap probably helps keep the eraser working better since it stays clean and won't lay down schmootz on your desk.
CLIP
The pencil clip is a joke. You can clip your pencil to the top of your pad as long as you have no plans to actually move your pad around. The only thing the clips are good for is keeping your pencil from rolling off an unlevel desk. They would probably also work clipped onto a pocket protector as long as you don't bend over and pick up one of these pencils you'd clipped to your notebook before walking to your boss's office. I've never used a pocket protector. How do you keep the pocket protector in your pocket when you pull a pen with a working clip off it? Do you pin them into your shirt? If you use pocket protectors, these are pretty.
SUMMARY
I love my Uni Kuru Toga pencil, and I love the lead that comes with it. Even though I write too quickly for the auto-rotating mechanism to keep up, I advance the lead far less often then with other mechanical pencils, and it does work for the other person who tested the pencil for me. It's adorable, it feels smooth and soft in the hand, and I'm definitely glad I spent the money on these pencils.
PROs:
- The baby pink is attractive with nice little additions like the color coordinated eraser cap.
- The pencil writes well on all the paper I tried it on.
- The rotating mechanism makes the pencil far less annoying than all my other mechanical pencils because the lead breaks less because I don't have to advance it as often.
- The pencil feels good in my hand. It's smooth without being slippery.
CONS:
- This is inexpensive in the overall scheme of pencils, but it's more expensive than many folks are used to paying for a mechanical pencil. To that I saw pish tosh. Keep it in one place so that you don't loose it.
- The clip is a waste of money. They shouldn't have bothered wasting the time to put on a useless clip.
- I want to try the .7mm now, and that's going to be more spent money.
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So, what do you think; should I give my coworker the extra pencil since she liked the auto-rotation so much?
