In the game of competing to be the smoothest pen in the world, Pentel's Vicuna seems to have won the first round being highly popular in Asia market. Friends at Pentel continue to introduce exceptional products to us near the end of November this year. Among them, Ain Stein is most worth mentioning IMHO.
Yes you heard it right, Pentel people love to play with product names, remember the Slicci name's origin? This time a new Ain pencil lead line called Ain Stein was born and named after its supreme scientific wisdom behind (ehh Einstein you know). Pentel claims to have used strengthened molecular structure to make the leads stronger than other brands, yet having better darkness and stronger smear resistance.
Well, I am no expert in 'leads', but would love to do a double-blind test to see for myself if the claim is really true. In the meantime, do visit Dave's Mechanical Pencils blog to see his review, check out the comments from readers too :) Anyhow, the containers are beautiful.