Zebra's Blen costs ¥165 — and blue and red ink come only in a white body (counting the colours of five Blen series)
Zebra's Blen is a ¥165 ballpoint pen. The series carrying the "Blen System", which damps the vibration of writing, includes the single-colour Blen, the Blen U, the three-colour Blen 3C, and the Blen 2+S and 4+S, which add a mechanical pencil. Counting every colour in the official lists (checked on 7 November 2026), each series turns out to follow its own rule for pairing "body colour" with "ink colour".
One mechanism, five pens from ¥165 to ¥1,100
Zebra's page explains the Blen System with three features: "Direct Touch", which holds the tip of the refill when you click to write; "Low centre of gravity", with a metal weight inside the grip; and "Noise-free design", which removes gaps between internal parts. The page credits the design to Oki Sato of nendo.
| Model | Price (tax incl.) | Ink colours | Body colours (0.5 mm / 0.7 mm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blen | ¥165 | Black, blue, red (one per pen) | 7 / 7 |
| Blen U | ¥242 | Black, blue, red (one per pen) | 5 / 3 |
| Blen 3C | ¥440 | Black, red, blue (three in one) | 5 / 5 |
| Blen 2+S | ¥550 | Black, red (two in one) plus pencil | 5 / 5 |
| Blen 4+S | ¥1,100 | Black, red, blue, green (four in one) plus pencil | 5 / 5 |
On the Blen, blue and red ink come only in a white body
The ¥165 Blen has nine combinations in both 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm. The body comes in seven colours — black, grey, white, purple, light blue, mint green and light pink — but only the two white-bodied pens (blue and red) have non-black ink; the other seven are black ink. Pick a coloured body and the ink is black.
The Blen U is the reverse. Blue and red ink come only in a black body, while the purple, mint green, white and other bodies are black ink only. There are seven combinations in 0.5 mm and five in 0.7 mm; the purple and blue-grey bodies are missing in 0.7 mm.
Only the 4+S changes body colours with the tip size
The 3C and 2+S list the same five colours in 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm. The 4+S differs. The 0.5 mm comes in black, powder blue, cocoa brown, greige and white; the 0.7 mm in black, blue-grey, mint green, shell pink and white. Only black and white are shared. You have to choose the tip size first, then look at the body colours.
The survey figures Zebra publishes
Under user verification, the page states that a vibration-frequency test found the Blen to be "the most vibration-controlled", and that in a writing-performance survey 84.3% of people said they would want to buy it. Both are Zebra's figures; PencilDB has not verified them.
What we do not know
- The number of people, the comparison targets and the method behind the 84.3%. The page does not say.
- Weight and dimensions. The pages we checked give no figures.
- The year of release. It is not on the product pages.
- How the Blen U's listed feature, writing steadily and darkly with light pressure, differs from the Blen's. Zebra gives it only one line in the list.
- Why the body colours are arranged this way. Zebra does not explain.