Pentel Vicuna Super Smooth 2 Color 0.7 mm Ballpoint Multi Pen + 0.5 mm Pencil - Sky Blue Body

I think if it had a highlighter too, you'd have everything you need for school in terms of writing instruments.

I think this is the last sample from the recent batch of goodies JetPens sent me. Poor thing got overshadowed by my excitement over the Jetstream alpha gel grip and the new Pilot Petit series.

Sky blue is a great color, just not as exciting as electric purple or epileptic orange.

The body’s comfortably sized, not too thick (a typical problem for some multi pens). Light plastic, smooth rubber grip. The rubber in the grip is NOT made of the typical debris-magnet material, meaning I need not worry about recklessly throwing the Vicuña into bags, pockets, sandboxes, etc. The grip has small, recessed ridges (ravines?) for better traction. I don’t have traction problems when using pens, so I can’t speak to how effective this design is.

Something is missing here

The plungers work well, no complaints. But what do you not see on the end of this thing? AN ERASER. I thought it was pen law that every multi-pen with a mandatory pencil component had to provide an eraser or face heavy fines from the Council of Regulatory Administration of Pens. Maybe no eraser is better than an insultingly dinky eraser, but I think I would have appreciated at least a token effort in the eraser department.

The weapons at your disposal

The black ballpoint was suitably smooth, but I had problems with the red. You can see up there how there’s red ink gunk caked around the rollerball. There’s clearly something not going right there, and the result is that the red was far too often being reluctant to put ink on the page. A smooth ballpoint should have no skipping; it should certainly not have so much that it’s a noticeable problem. I don’t know if the problems I had with the red ballpoint were a fluke, or a common problem.

I do not recommend writing with the barrel off.

They weren’t very good serious doodle pen components; you can see in the writing sample how streaky and icky thin, light lines often looked. Not a problem that came up in writing (except for the aforementioned red problems). The mechanical pencil performed its task as a mechanical pencil should, and I noticed nothing to complain about.

I do like how they've got the name underneath the translucent grip. Nicely done.

Is this the best smooth-ballpoint-and-mechanical-pencil multipen? Probably not—the competition in the smooth ballpoint category is fierce, and I think the Zebra Surari multi pen has the lockdown as best in the lower price tier. But I don’t think you’d be disappointed in picking one of these up. It’s thin, light, pleasing to the eyes, and if it weren’t for that red ink component and lack of eraser, I’d recommend it without any caveats.

 

Thanks again to JetPens! :)

Pentel Vicuna Super Smooth 2 Color 0.7 mm Ballpoint Multi Pen + 0.5 mm Pencil – Sky Blue Body at JetPens

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