Pentel Orenz 0.5
Another Orenz post.
I bought this Orenz from eBay seller Morgan’s Direct for £4.99 (~$7.30; €6.50).
0.5 mm, 0.7 mm and the Mannish Line
You might have seen my Facebook post about the recently released 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm version of the Orenz and about the Orenz Mannish Line that will be released in June.
The Mannish Line has some interesting colour combinations. Very tempting.
The Orenz in 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm doesn’t seem to be available in Japan. The one I bought was the official UK version, but made in Japan, of course.
The sliding sleeve
The 0.3 mm version of the Orenz needed quite a bit more force to slide the sleeve than the 0.2 mm version, see the sliding sleeve table for more information. This made me think that the 0.5 mm version will need even more force to slide the sleeve, but to my surprise that was not the case. While the 0.3 mm version needs more than 0.1 Newton, the 0.5 mm version needs only about 0.1 Newton. That’s still more than the best 0.5 mm pencil, the Staedtler Microfix S, but as far as I know, this is the best value for a pencil currently in production. Using different leads might result in different values, but both the 0.3 mm and the 0.5 mm version of the Orenz were tested with the original leads they came with.
Vitals
Weight: 10.4 grams
Length: 14.5 centimetres
Diameter of the grip section: ~8 millimetres
Force needed to slide the sleeve: ~0.1 newton
Conclusion
Overall: it’s a fantastic pencil. Pentel’s pencil designs are very polarising for me, I either love or dislike them, but the Orenz has a design I really love, unlike the P20x series liked by many, but not me.
It’s a shame that this pencil is only available in black. Pentel, please release it in other colours, too.
Price and exchange rate: May 2016.
This mechanical pencil has been added to the sliding sleeve table.
More about the Orenz can be found in these Bleistift blog posts: Pentel Orenz 0.3, Peanuts Orenz 0.2, The sliding sleeve and the Pilot Color Eno, Why did the sliding sleeve disappear?…
…or at The Pen Addict, I Liek Pencils, One Lone Man…
…and at Lexikaliker, who was probably the first outside Japan to write about this pencil.
You can read more about Georg Christoph Lichtenberg at Wikipedia.
The notebooks in the photos are Silvine Memo Books.
