The Hi-Uni is made by the Mitsubishi Pencil company in Japan– oddly, no relation to the car company — and are the best pencils I’ve ever used. The Hi-Uni is the high-end flagship product — the company offers other lines but Hi-Uni is the most readily available (circa 2014). They can be bought from Amazon, eBay, and Jet Pens. In Japan (again, circa 2014), a dozen Hi-Unis retail for 1,680 yen , which translates into $15.50. In the US, the lowest prices I’ve seen hover around twenty bucks.
Feature of the Hi-Uni:
- sharpen excellently, the bonding between the graphite core and wood is superior, as close to seamless as I’ve ever seen it. There’s no unseemly broken off wood.
- the thick coat of lacquer/paint conceals the grain and cutting of the pencil and withstands scuffing (I keep most of my pencils in cups — and every other once-shiny pencil looks dull, while the Unis keep their shine. I don’t know of another pencil with such a concealing and protective coating
- excellent paint job, stamping and overall finish. Care’s gone into every detail
- aromatic red cedar wood shavings — the color is unique among all the pencils I’ve ever used; the aroma is worth inhaling
- the graphite glides on paper across the full range of degrees — I used up a lot of 2Bs in my drawing journals, so I can appreciate the difference (dark lines, low scratching)
- excellently graded from 10H to 10B. Things go bad with the ridiculously hard and brittle 10H — other than that, no problems
It’s great when a company decides to create something better than it has to be.
According to an eBay seller from Japan, engeika:
“…like all other Japanese people, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni wooden pencil has been our lifelong companions. Back in my junior high school, only elite family kids could afford Uni pencils. It was ranked more expensive than that time’s daily used pencil.”
Every graphite grade is comparatively smoother than other brands, even taking into account that Japanese pencils run darker than the German pencils, for example. This smoothness in the softer grades (including the 2B), has a drawback (or maybe feature, if that’s how you see it) and that is that the graphite smudges much easier than other pencils. You could also say it erases better. Some artists will welcome the smudge-ability, but other, perhaps more precision artists may balk at it–or they could learn to adapt to the features of this particular tool.
Best pencils? Best quality? Best consistency? Most beautiful? I think so.
Perfect? Well, there’s no eraser… 😉
Just kidding. These are perfect.
Perfect Pencil 