Review: The 0.5 Lamy Safari Mechanical Pencil

A lot gets written on the Lamy Safari Fountain pen. Here’s my thoughts on the companion mechanical pencil..

I’ll start by saying that I generally like German things-I lived there for a bit, and I play a lot of Beethoven and Bach on the piano. Their stuff is constructed well (the music exceptionally so.)

So, I had my expectations when I opened up the Lamy package. And they were dashed, at least initially. The Lamy Safari Mechanical pencil had two really thick plastic seams on its sides from the mold:

So, kind of crude. I double checked to see if it was a knock-off. It wasn’t. Next was the issue of advancing the lead: The Lamy safari pencil has a retractable tip that is finicky-sometimes it comes out or goes in and sometimes it doesn’t:

I can generally push it back in with my finger if I need to..So, it advances ok, but the usefulness of the retraction is questionable.

The Lamy Safari Mechanical pencil writes well and writes sharp – and that’s its strong suit.

The barrel has enough grippy points (seams included) that I turn the pencil in my hand pretty easily, and keep it sharp – pretty close to my Kuru Togas. And the pencil has some life to it-I enjoy the experience.

I like the overall design of the Lamy Safari mechanical pencil – the signature clip is nice if I need to clip it to something big, the eraser still has a needle for clearing out jams, and the balance in the hand is pleasant – but the retractable tip worries me long term. Kinda wish there was a Chinese knock-off..

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