All is not lost though because today I'm reviewing an ink that I've been using on a daily basis ever since my last ink review. Lamy Red, the ink in question, has lasted all this time in my Pilot Varsity that I use at work. In truth, I use red ink rarely so it usually lasts a long time. In this case, the nature of this ink also helped with longevity. Let's explore why.
Bottle
Lamy inks hail from Germany and they come in 50ml (1.7oz) bottles for $8.50, or $0.17 per milliliter.
Color and saturation
Lamy Red is not very saturated in writing, despite what you see from the samples. Swabbing with the q-tip produces more saturation, obviously. The color tends a bit towards orange-pink. You can see how it compares to Noodler's Nikita, which, to my opinion, is a truer red.
Shading
Lamy Red doesn't have any shading to speak of.
Feathering
The absence of feathering is always a good thing.
Bleedthrough
No bleedthrough either.
Flow and lubrication
Here's where Lamy Red starts to falter. This is one of the drier inks I've tried in recent memory. The lack of saturation and shading when using a fountain pen could be partly due to its dryness and reluctance to flow. While cheap paper will induce it to flow somewhat by acting as a sponge, better paper such as the Rhodia 80g I used for one of the samples offers a very poor surface. I did not enjoy writing that segment on Rhodia. Luckily I use cheap paper at work.
Drying time
Dry ink usually means quick dry. No exception here, though I would have traded some drying time for better flow.
Smearing when dry
None.
Water resistance
This ink isn't rated waterproof and it shows. A mere 15 seconds under flowing water made most of the text illegible.
Conclusion
To be honest I didn't have great expectations about Lamy Red. I guess I wasn't disappointed, in that sense. While I'm sure this ink has its fans (who perhaps like the color), personally I cannot recommend it. There's nothing particularly appealing about the color to me, while the dryness kills it completely. Verdict: there are much better red inks out there.
Following are the two samples on photocopy and Rhodia 80g paper, respectively.
