Uni Posca Colored Pencils Review: Bold Color With Some Trade-Offs

Introduction

Uni, the Mitsubishi Pencil brand behind the hugely popular Posca paint markers, has extended the Posca name into colored pencils, and also into a pastel pencil line. The paint markers earned a strong reputation for bright, opaque color and a wide color range, so expectations for the pencils were naturally high. After working with them across swatching, layering, blending, solvent, and black-paper tests, the picture is mixed: genuinely vibrant color and excellent opacity, but pricing and a few design choices that are worth thinking about before you buy.

Pencil Design and Build

These are chunky pencils with a 3.8 mm core inside an 8 mm round barrel. The matte black barrel looks sharp, set off by white Posca branding and a bright pigment identifier flash on the end. They sharpen cleanly with no issues, and the point holds its form remarkably well while you work, which makes them feel harder than they actually are. The core seems to behave more like a very hard wax than a true oil-based lead, giving them a firm, oil-pencil-like feel with plenty of wax in the mix.

One practical frustration: the pigment name is printed on a barcode sticker near the base of the barrel, not on the barrel itself, and sharpening will eventually cut into it. The color number on the barrel end is your only lasting reference, so it is worth making a swatch sheet with color names and numbers as soon as the pencils arrive. The packaging also works against you. The boxes show no color indication beyond a small window, the smaller sets are hard to open without destroying them, and there is no obvious rhyme or reason to how colors are divided between the sets.

Color Range and Sets

The largest set is a 36-pencil tin arranged in three tiers, which covers the full range. Beyond that, colors come in cardboard sets of six or twelve, and open-stock singles were not found anywhere, so topping up means buying additional sets. Because several colors repeat across the smaller sets, buying multiples leaves you with duplicates: two reds, two oranges, two light pinks, two blacks and whites, two browns. That limits how much artwork you can actually do, and makes planning a piece with a broad palette difficult.

The swatches themselves are encouraging. On smooth Bristol vellum paper the colors are genuinely bright and vibrant, clearly intended to match the Posca marker aesthetic. Note that the official digital swatches can look noticeably different from real pigment on paper, so treat any online color chart as an approximation.

Layering, Blending, and Solvent Tests

Layering performed well with no stickiness or tackiness between passes, and heavy application is where these pencils really shine: the color goes down bright and saturated. Blending was similarly trouble-free, with clean secondary colors emerging from overlaps, red and yellow producing a convincing orange, blue and yellow a good green, and red and blue a nice purple.

The odorless mineral spirits test also went well. Light layers broke down nicely under solvent, filling the tooth of the paper and allowing further layers once dry, without damaging the paper surface the way burnishing can. If solvent work is part of your process, these pencils handle it competently. If, like some artists, you prefer colored pencil to stay colored pencil, this test simply confirms they behave like a standard wax-leaning pencil under solvent.

Performance on Black and Toned Paper

This is where the Posca pencils earn their name. They are thick and notably opaque, which makes them excellent on black, toned tan, or toned gray paper. Where a more translucent pencil such as a Polychromos lets dark paper mute the color through multiple layers, the Posca pigment sits brightly on top of the surface. If bold, opaque coverage on dark grounds is what you want from a pencil, this is their strongest use case.

Coverage and Paper Behavior

Here the experience gets uneven. On a pad of German lightfast drawing paper, burnishing heavy applications failed to produce a smooth finish, and switching to Strathmore 300 series Bristol vellum helped but still did not deliver the polished surface other pencils achieve. Coverage looked fine from a distance but revealed patchiness up close. It is possible that working more slowly and building layers with more patience would improve results, but across multiple attempts on different papers the pencils never quite clicked for detailed finished work.

Pricing and Value

Prices fluctuate significantly between stores. The 36-pencil set has been seen at around 45 pounds in some retailers, but also at 96 pounds in others, and roughly 117 dollars in the US. At the higher end of that range, this is not a good deal at all, and even at the lower end there are strong alternatives to consider. It appears prices were reduced after early feedback, but they still feel high for the pencil you get. Shop around before buying.

There is also no prominent lightfastness information. No ASTM or Blue Wool rating could be found without deep digging, which suggests these should not be treated as artist-grade, lightfast pencils despite the “artist pencils” labeling. Brands that invest in formal lightfast testing tend to display it prominently; its absence here is telling.

Who These Pencils Are For

The Posca colored pencils work nicely for adult coloring books, where their brightness and opacity on smooth paper is a real advantage, and for opaque work on black or toned paper. For commissioned pieces, gallery work, or anything you intend to sell, the lack of lightfast data makes them hard to recommend.

Conclusion

Uni Posca colored pencils deliver on the brand promise of bright, vibrant, opaque color, and they layer, blend, and take solvent well. But confusing packaging, duplicated colors across sets, limited availability, inconsistent coverage on finished artwork, missing lightfast information, and pricing that still feels high make them a niche pick. Buy them for bold opaque color work and dark-paper projects if you find a genuinely good deal; look elsewhere for archival or detailed fine-art work.