on salePelikan Edelstein Mandarin - Ink Sample

I've been looking for an orange that never makes me think of anything related to brown. So much hype about Noodler's Apache Sunset but to me it ends up more of an amber than an orange. Mandarin is orange, and it is pleasing to my eye. Behavior wise Mandarin is both dryer and more well behaved than Edelstein Tanzanite or Sapphire.

I bought an ink sample of this to try and loaded a brand new Jinhao X750 with it. The colour is very nice and has some nice dark/light variation, but seems to write extremely dry. I had/am having a lot of issues with hard-starts with this ink in the new pen, but I can't say for sure whether that's the ink or the pen. I'm going through the last of the sample now, and I've been having to force the ink into the feed from the adapter to get things going. Once it's flowing it writes nicely, and dries very quickly on the page.

I found the Mandarin a bit light for my taste but the Topaz is beautiful. It does seem to offer a drier line that the J. Herbin does in my Faber Castell Intuition. Yet I do love the coloring of the ink. I would love to see Pelikan add to this line of colors and follow what Pilot has done with their Iroshizuku inks.

I really enjoy using this ink. It goes down relatively dry, but the flow isn't a problem. Once on the paper, it dries quickly and I haven't found it to feather even on cheaper papers. After drying, it's not easy to smear. The color is quite pleasing to my eyes; it reminds me of Rhodia orange. It's not the most saturated ink out there, but for my money it's a good purchase.

I expected a vivid shade of orange but I received more shade and less orange. The ink is just too light to be easily legible when taking notes. The swab showed a deeper, more vibrant shade of orange than I have seen in person. The bottle is lovely but not the reason to buy ink.