“A so-so mechanical pencil with auto-advance feature”. Said the Potato.
Well I’m always curious about pencils equipped with auto lead advance ever since I heard about the KT Dive and Orenz Nero, and even more after I tasted the greatness of the Faber-Castell alphamatic and TK matic. So for the Sun-star Nocfree Metal it’s not an exception. To be fair, there is more than the auto-advance that make this pencil interesting to some : the metal body, the grip design and the Bandai Namco name itself.
It only comes in 0.5mm, and the pipe is not fine enough. For comparison, let’s look at the Pentel Orenz Nero, which actually cares about the relative size between the guiding pipe and the lead itself. On the Nocfree Metal, we see a clunky design. If you maintain a straight posture, you have to squint really hard to see where the lead touches the paper surface. Or, you can try to “feel” it, good luck with that.
The cone is brass, the body is aluminum, and the cap is plastic. The internals and the clutch are also plastic, rendering the center of gravity slightly toward the tip (the yellow dot in the second picture). A hard shell covering an elastic internal gives me the image of a snail. And I hate snails. Just look at that clutch… *sigh*. A plastic clutch is not necessarily a bad design, but when they so focus on metal in their advertisement, I expected more.
The grip is useless; they replaced one slippery thing with another slippery thing. I can barely feel it, and when I try to, I lose the feel of the pencil entirely. The bare aluminum grip is actually better than those parallel plastic lines.
The clip is so-so, like the KT Dive, but less strong. The cap has a small hole through which lead could theoretically slip out since there is no eraser, but I challenge anyone to actually make the leads go out through that hole. I don’t know what the purpose of that hole is; every hole should have a purpose. This one isn’t big enough for child-protection regulations, yet it’s small enough to make me question its existence. If I were being pedantic, I would say the hole is there to reduce pressure inside the tube while the pencil is in use. OH WAIT, it’s also for reloading leads into the pencil without removing the cap.
The writing experience is not bad. The tip is very responsive, and since the pipe is not overly refined but well-chamfered at the edge, the scratchy feel is negligible. Regardless, I write mostly on Midori MD paper, which is normally smooth enough to boost every pencil to a whole new level.
Welp, the “short review” was a lie. Anyway, I think this is not a bad pencil, but it isn’t an exceptional one either. I feel like Sun-Star made this pencil to be given away as a gift for someone buying a Gundam.