This Pentel Vicuna Multi Pen with Mechanical Pencil was graciously offered up to me by Brad and the folks at Jetpens. Since I have a problem saying "No" to any conversation that starts with "Would you like to try this pen?" we have a review of it here for you today.
Admittedly, the mechanical pencil plunger on the Pentel Vicuna Multi Pen caused me a bit of confusion at first, and I don't blame this on the pen necessarily, I think it is very possible that I was just being dense. With my first attempts at advancing the lead on the Vicuna Multi Pen, I found myself mashing the plunger the same way a caveman would probably mash his knurled fingers into the face of a smart phone, if he had time traveled to the current day. I probably made similar primal grunting noises with a full furled brow as well when I saw that my mashing of the plunger just refused to advance any lead.
I slowly figured out though that once you depress the plunger to expose the tip (see the metal tip with the white plastic sleeve above) you need to then click it even further in a downward motion to actually advance the lead so you can write with it. I wont tell you how long it took me to figure this out, I'll only just hope that it saves at least one person some time in getting down to using this super smooth writing multi pen.
In the past I have reviewed the single barrel version of the Vicuna, and I really enjoyed writing with it, but there was something a little different with this versions writing experience that it took me a few seconds to figure out.
If you look at the picture of the red Vicuna above you can see that the grip itself is slightly tapered, while the grip on the multi pen version lacks any kind of tapered barrel. Presumably this is to accommodate for the additional space required for the extra ink and mechanical pencil tube, however it does change the feel of the pen. I found the grip to be not quite as easy to hold onto as compared to its tapered single pen brother. It didn't slip out of my hand or anything, but it did make me feel like I had to hold it tighter, and I struggled a bit at first with where to hold it. Typically I hold a pen at a pretty low point on the grip, and it was hard to do it with this pen because the cone is at such a steep angle, and here is a ridge that you can feel between the end of the grip and the beginning of the cone.
At this point, I feel like I've been a bit nit-picky with this review on some minor issues. With that said though, the Pentel Vicuna Multi Pen writes fantastically. The black and red ink flow very smoothly, and leave a nice bold line (although the red seems a shade light) that really shames other standard ballpoint pens. The addition of the .5mm mechanical pencil is a "nice to have" for me since I'm not a huge pencil user, but it does function quite well, and the writing is as to be expected. One other thing to note about the pencil portion of this multi pen is that there is no eraser included anywhere on the pen, so you will need your own dedicated eraser to fully enjoy this versatile offering from Pentel. Check out the Vicuna Multi Pen over at Jetpens for more pictures and also more body colors.
