In this video we compare the main differences between the Pilot Hi-Tec C Coleto and Uni Style Fit line-ups in order to help you decide which custom multi pen line is right for your needs!
Uni Style Fit Products
Pilot Hi-Tec C Coleto Products
Uni Style Fit Gel Ink Refills
Uni Style Fit Pencil Unit
Uni Style Fit Jetstream Refills
Uni Style Fit Meister 5
Uni Style Fit Meister 5 Rose Gold Trim
Uni Style Fit Single
Uni Style Fit Shell Four Earthy Colors
Uni Style Fit Shell Five
Uni Style Fit Shell One
Uni Style Fit Translucent 3 Color Shell
Uni Style Fit Shell Three
Uni Style Fit Shell Four
Uni Style Fit Meister 5 Personal Flower Colors
Hi-Tec C Coleto Ink Cartridge
Hi-Tec C Coleto Ink Cartridge Neon
Hi-Tec C Coleto Ink Cartridge Pastels
Hi-Tec C Coleto Ink Cartridge Metallic
Hi-Tec C Coleto 4 Color Barrel Rubber Grip
Hi-Tec C Coleto 2 Color Barrel
Hi-Tec C Coleto 5 Color Barrel Rubber Grip
Hi-Tec C Coleto 3 Color Barrel Rubber Grip
Hi-Tec C Coleto 1000 4 Color Barrel
Hi-Tec C Coleto 500 4 Color Barrel
Hi-Tec C Coleto Refill 10 pack
Hi-Tec C Pencil Unit
Hi-Tec C Eraser Unit
Hi-Tec C Eraser Unit Refill
Below is an AI generated transcript of the video, If something seems weird, check the video itself:
Hello everyone.
Today, we're going to compare the Uni Style Fit and the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto Custom Multi-Series. For anyone trying to decide between the two, I'll be going over the main differences to consider between these customizable multi-pin lineups.
Custom multi-pens are pens that hold multiple refills, and all the components are sold separately so you can create the pen that is ideal for you and your specific writing needs.
First, let's talk about the holders. The Uni Style Fit has holders that hold three, four, or five inserts. Similarly, the Coleto also has barrels that hold three, four, and five inserts. Now, the Coleto also has a two-color option insert, which we are currently sold out of. I'm going to post a picture here so you can see what that one looks like.
Technically, the Uni Style Fit does have a one-color insert option. They used to have these single-color holders that came empty, and then you could just put whatever refill you wanted in them. They've recently discontinued these, but you can still easily get that result from the Uni Style Fit singles—the exact same type of barrel and refills with the Uni Style Fit series. Unfortunately, the Coleto doesn't have an option if you just wanted the single color ink.
Let's move on from barrels for a moment. I want to point out that both the Uni Style Fit and the Coleto have options for what would be considered an upgraded barrel. The Uni Style Fit Meister is a five-color option but also has a cool feature where there is a hidden eraser beneath the cap. Even though the Coleto does not have any barrels that have erasers built into them, you can actually get an eraser into your Coleto. I'll be going over that when I discuss the actual insert options for the two different types of custom multis.
Again, the Meister holds five colors, has that eraser beneath the cap, and comes in both a silver trim option, which is cheaper, and a rose gold option, which is more expensive. Originally, they had these colors in the Meister, which they're still making with that silver clip and the same price point. As they come out with newer, more modern, pretty colors, they're putting the rose gold clip on them, and they are more expensive. So, that's worth noting.
Some of you might remember the Meister 3 in the Uni Style Fit series, which was a great upgrade model. Unfortunately, it is no longer made. Maybe someday we'll get lucky and they'll come out with it again, but as of now, it's no longer available.
Moving over to the Coleto and their upgraded options, you have the Coleto 500. The Coleto 500 holds four. The Coleto doesn't have an upgraded barrel option that holds five. Both of these ones I'm going to show you hold four. One nice thing about the Coleto 500 is that it still has a comfortable, kind of rubbery grip, just like the regular Coleto barrels that I already showed you. This helps to prevent slippage, whereas you can see in the Uni Style Fit, it does not have that kind of rubbery grip.
Other than the Coleto 500, there's also the Coleto 1000, another four-color upgrade model. Some of you might remember the Coleto Lumio, which has been discontinued but was somewhat similar to the Coleto 1000. If you miss the Lumio, you might like to check out the Coleto 1000.
Again, none of these Coleto barrels hold erasers beneath their caps like the Meister does. The way the bodies are filled in each of these different series is quite different, so I definitely want to go over that because we do see damage to each type of barrel if they're not being refilled properly.
First of all, more people are familiar with the Coleto way of refilling because it really had its heyday with planner people. So, it tends to be a little bit more well-known than the Uni Style Fit, even among people who don't usually use Japanese pens. The Coleto refills by this very easy popping open of the cap. Now, over the years, they have improved the way the cap opens. It used to be much harder to open, and some people would accidentally break the cap off trying to get it open. So, now it's supposed to be easy with just the push of your thumb to open it up. Then, you're going to be feeding refills through this cap into the slots. Two things you have to make sure you're doing: going through the spring, and feeding it properly so that the nubbin at the top is fed properly. Let me show you what I mean by both of those things.
You're going to go in through the top. I'm going to try to do this in a way that you can see it well. Let me first show you just the top so you can see where I'm going to go in through. I'm going to make sure I'm going in through the springs. Okay, so then you can see I am going through there. I'm going through the springs. And then the next thing you're going to make sure is at the top. Do you see this little tiny piece right here? Some people make the mistake of not making sure it's inside their slotted area. They fill it like this, but you want to make sure that is back behind there, that it's feeding back behind there. Okay, and then you're just going to go around your barrel, feeding the whole barrel an insert or it's not going to work properly. This one is a five-color, so I'll be feeding five into it, making sure I'm going through properly. This one looks funny because it is a limited edition insert, so the topper is just different. But I'm through all the springs and I fed these in properly. And then you're just going to be able to select and start writing. To get the one that you're writing with back up to choose another, you're just going to gently slide down another one, which pops it back up. So you can kind of see I've got that one down, and I slide that other one down which pops it back up. It's definitely sometimes smoother than others, but anyway, so you can kind of get the gist of how these are fed and the ways people can accidentally damage them if they're not feeding them properly.
The Uni Style Fit is fed completely differently. Now, some of the issues we see with the Uni Style Fit are with people who think that these are like the Coleto and part of the refills. So then they'll end up trying to pry them off thinking they go through the top. With the Uni Style Fit, you don't go in through the top at all. You actually unscrew the barrel kind of around the middle. You can see where the grip and the top part of the barrel are just totally different pieces. It's easier to see on these transparent ones, but you're just going to unscrew them. Then, if you look into the cap, you can see that there are holes that I'm going to go in and insert my refills into. Let me open this with a colored one because I think it might be easier for you to see the holes. So, see, I'm just going to snap my refills in through there. So, your refills on the Uni Style Fit they come in these like tubes like this, and then you just pull your refill out. I usually take the little rubber tips off before I fill my custom multi-pens because it can be kind of hard on the pen if you're trying to grab those off when they're already fed into them. So, you're just going to take it and then you're going to pop it in. You can even hear and feel what it's like when these Uni Style Fit ones pop in there.
Now, something you might have noticed already is that the tips of the various refills are actually different.
Speaking about the Coleto refills, the Coleto has these needle tips, but they're also called pipe tips. So, you know, whichever you want to use. But you can see, especially if I zoom back into the tip, you're going to be able to see how the Coleto pipe tip compares to the conical Uni Style Fit tip. It really is a different writing experience.
Okay, so we've covered how to fill and refill your holders and a little bit of the difference with the inserts themselves. Now, let's talk about the insert options in each series.
The Uni Style Fit holds the Uni Style Fit gel ink, which is this water-based pigment gel ink that I've got swatched here. There are also Jetstream refills and pencil units for the Uni Style Fit.
So, I've got kind of showing my like extras here for the Uni Style Fit now for the Coleto. The standard refills are the your gel ink, which is actually a biopolymer ink. Extras include some novelty gel ink colors like your metallic pastels and Neons. All of these look good on black paper as well. So, I'll insert a picture to show you that.
Here, and then there's also a pencil unit and eraser unit options for the Coleto. The Eraser unit feeds in like—let me see if I have one here—yes, okay. So, the Eraser unit on the Coleto feeds in like the refill does. The nubbin thing at the top is a little bigger, so it sticks out a little more. A disadvantage to this, I guess, would be—so it's kind of there's a trade-off because in the Uni Style Fit to get the Eraser built in, you really have to be going with the Meister body. Whereas with the Coleto, you can put an eraser in any of your Coleto holders. However, it's going to take up one of your insert slots. So, it's kind of a trade-off there. Now, the Eraser insert does come with an eraser. Let me show you how fine this eraser is, how kind of skinny, which makes it great, you know, for detailed erasing. And then you also can refill that. So, there's the Eraser unit and the Eraser unit refill, so you can reuse that again and again. Now, to kind of show you what I mean by it sticking out, let me go in through this, just pulled a random Coleto Barrel, but you're going to feed it in the same way. However, you can see how it definitely sticks out more on the top. And part of that is they had to build in this mechanism to be able to, like, you know, extract the Eraser while you're using it. So, that's kind of why the nubbin is like different on the top. And the mechanical pencil refill is the same way. So, you know, sticks out a little farther, may or may not be an issue for you. Okay, but back to the ink options. So, comparing, so comparing your gel ink options, the Coleto comes in one fewer color option than the Uni Style Fit. So, the Coleto comes in 15 different colors whereas the Uni Style Fit has 16. The main difference you're going to see with the color options here is that the Uni Style Fit really has a third orange shade in their lineup. And if I can just take a moment to point out something that's, you know, significant for me is I feel like there are even fewer than 15 color options in the Coleto because I feel that the aqua blue is so similar to the blue. So, like, these three blue shades that the Coleto comes in don't seem as big of a variation as the three blue shades that the Uni Style Fit comes in. And then similarly, their cherry pink to me looks so similar to the red. Granted, it's different, but it's so similar that I feel like you get more of a color variation over in the Uni Style Fit when you're looking at their pinks. Like, for example, comparing the pinks, the Uni Style Fit one is much more like purple in it, and you just get this like bigger variation here. So, something to point out. But what the Coleto kind of limits in terms of the standard lineup ink colors, it really makes up for in these novelty extra ink colors because you've got six metallics, you have six pastels. I only swatched five here because one of them is white, so it's not going to show up on the white paper. And then you've got six Neons. So, a lot of added novelty colors, which again, like I said before, look great on black. Now, comparing the standard refills, the Uni Style Fit is going to come in .28mm, .38, and .5. The Coleto very similar, comes in .3mm and .5. If you're talking about the sort of like extra novelty inks, all of these metallics pastels and Neons in the Coleto come only in .4. The Coleto pencil comes in both .3 and .5, which is nice if you want that finer pencil option, whereas the Uni Style Fit, the pencil option currently only comes in .5. Now, the Jet Stream refills that come in your, you know, everyone's favorite Jet Stream ink black, blue, and red, but in three different tip sizes .5, .7, and 1.0. So, a lot of different things to consider with the two, like if you want more of an oil-based ballpoint ink, you're going to want to go with the Uni Style Fit because of those Jet Stream refills, things like that.
So, a lot of good reasons to choose either one, and you sort of have to decide what your like priorities are in your pen. So, finally, I would like to mention that both lineups are going to have from time to time limited edition versions. So, like, for example, here is a limited edition Uni Style Fit that came out at one point that's really cute mini the Poo Meister. Here's an example of the Coleto barrel coming in this adorable Snoopy model. And or sold out of those because they only make limited like quantities. Currently, we have a few other Coleto limited editions on our site. The Pollen Joe series is one that I really like. We have a little bit of Pollen Joe left. But one cool thing too about the Pollen Joe series is that it included these Coleto cases. So, these limited edition Coleto cases that are, you know, not they're they're not for sale in the standard lineup. So, you can only get the Coleto cases when they release them in these limited edition ways. But this holds 10 different refills. It is refillable, and it's just a nice convenient way of being able to carry your refills. So, that looks like this. It even when you open it, it also can act a little bit as a stand, but it's just really simple to use. You just take out the refill you want to use, and you can refill it with a refill that you buy, you know, like this too. So, use it as long as you want.
Really, and then in the Uni Style Fit, there are often what they do is like limited edition colors of the barrels. So, like, right now we have some limited edition Meister colors. We also have these really cute, let me see, four-color Scandinavian design barrels. I'll link all this stuff in the description, so you don't have to worry about searching for it. But this limited edition series, keep this, I think it's like a f a finish designer, maybe this one is just really, really cute. I especially obviously love the Hedgehog Barrel. So, another thing to keep in mind, you know, just the limited edition series options that they do are yet another consideration when you're thinking about if you want to try out the Coleto or the Uni Style Fit. So, as always, if you have any questions about these pens, leave them below, and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you and have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye-bye.