Lamy AL-Star Rollerball and Mechanical Pencil — The Gentleman Stationer

I don’t consider that critique entirely on-point for a couple of reasons. First, the molded grip on both the Safari and AL-Star is symmetrical and triangular, so rotating the pencil shouldn’t affect your grip too much as long as you are someone who can actually use the AL-Star or Safari. (The molded section just doesn’t work for some people given issues of comfort and how they hold the pen/pencil.) If you rotate the pencil, there will be three different angles at which the grip remains the same. I don’t personally use the molded grip to guide finger placement, as Lamy intends, and have no issue resting my fingers on top of the triangular edges, so this has never been a problem for me as someone who does rotate their mechanical pencils as I write.

For my own purposes, I wanted to find out whether the weight of the pen would affect lead breakage in the .5mm size. The AL-Star and Safari mechanical pencils are bigger pencils with a thicker diameter, and the AL-Star is metal. My concerns turned out to be unfounded. The pencil writes nicely, even with the thicker aluminum barrel. Those who sometimes find standard mechanical pencils too thin should definitely check this one out.