review: kaweco smokey grey

New brand alert! Well, Kaweco has been around for a long while, but this will be the first time I talk about one of their inks.

Kaweco is best known for their fountain pens, but they also make a lineup of inks. They're quite standard, with all of the colors being essentially what you would expect. None of the other colors seemed particularly interesting to me, but I thought I would go ahead and give Smokey Grey a try.

Kaweco Smokey Grey is a neutral gray color.

For information on how I do my reviews, please visit my policy page.

Kaweco Grey has a surprising amount of water resistance. Pretty much none of the color lifted at all!

The ink took a little bit of time to dry, thought it was dry by the 30 second mark. On Kokuyo MIO paper I think it took about 25 seconds to dry completely.

There's almost no shading on this paper in both the fine and broader nibs.

On the page, this ink goes down a bit redder but evens out to a slightly more neutral tone.

On Tomoe River paper, there is about the same amount of shading and no sheen.

I don't have a lot of grays in my repertoire, so I compared it to two: Diamine Silver Fox and Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun. Silver Fox and Fuyu-syogun are more blue. I would say Smokey Grey is a pretty neutral gray.

I had this ink in my LAMY AL-Star with a 1.1 mm nib and the pairing was lovely. Smokey Grey is just a bit on the wetter side, and I prefer wetter inks in my 1.1 mm nib (though I suppose you could say that I prefer wetter inks no matter what).

Kaweco Smokey Grey seems like a simple color, but for some reason I'm really into it. It just has a certain something about it that makes it a pleasure to write with. Maybe it's the tone of graphite without actually being graphite?

Where to buy

I received a sample of this ink for free as an employee of JetPens.

• JetPens: bottle
• Wonder Pens: bottle + sample