I’ve always found colored mechanical pencil lead refills to be hit or miss, but mostly miss.  I figured I’d take my chances with these Uni NanoDia Green Lead 0.5 mm leads that I saw on JetPens (right here if you are in a shopping mood) recently.  The package that they come in is a hard plastic container with a sliding top, which contains 20 individual refills that measure 60mm.  Quick reminder too that these refills were free of charge for this review as part of our partnership with JetPens.  None of this changes the honest opinion of the product in the following review though.

One thing I found interesting, that I never would have noticed without a super close photo like this, is that the inside of the Uni NanoDia Green Lead seems to be a much lighter or pale shade of green than the actual outside.  I’m not sure if this is just a natural result of the production process or if there is an effort to just make the outsides look more green for aesthetic reasons.  You can also see that there are grooves in the lead that show darker and lighter shades of green color to them.

This picture shows a little bit better version of the groves with darker and lighter shades of green.  You can also see the more grayish or pale green looking ends of each of the Uni NanoDia Green Leads here too.

Uni NanoDia Green Lead 0.5 mm Writing Sample:

Writing with the Uni NanoDia Green Lead was a bit underwhelming.  I was hoping for a slightly more vibrant shade of green, but instead it was a bit washed out.  As the lead point crossed the paper it had a bit of a soft waxy feel rather than the more dry and crisp feel of some of my favorite standard leads.  I will however say that the lead only broke on me once in all of my time writing with it, and of course it happened to be when doing the actual writing sample here.  They erased pretty well in a soft and medium shading, but the harder shading was more difficult to completely remove.

There will probably never be a colored lead refill that provides the same crisp and bold output you can get from standard lead, but if you are looking for different color leads, these are at least what I’d consider to be serviceable if you come into it with the right expectations.  Considering the price of these and the other colors available at JetPens, they are definitely worth a try and a great alternative to have in your arsenal, so check them out over on the JetPens website here.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.