Banmi Red is from a series of inks that feature animals on the labels. The 15 ml bottle of Red shows a monkey. You’ll find Banmi inks on AliExpress, and many other popular shopping sites. They’re available as a twelve-ink set, or individually for around US$4-5, including shipping.

This is an attractive, fairly saturated, pinkish red. It has a slightly matte appearance on many papers that I really like with this color range. I’d call this a watermelon red, especially on papers that bring out the nice shading properties. I’ve included a long writing sample on Cosmo Air Snow (fantastic paper, by the way) that really shows off the beauty of this monkey.

I found various levels of shading on all seven of the papers I used for testing. On coated papers, there’s sometimes a subtle darkening at stroke edges, and this makes it very well-defined and clean. It pops off the page. There were no issues with feather or spread on any of the high-quality papers. It performs better than most on cheap copy paper, too.

It’s wetter in flow than the numbered-series Banmi inks that I previously reviewed. I think this is the kind of writing experience that many people most prefer. It’s smooth and comfortable, and drying times were average or better on all papers.

Red (Monkey) is another pretty impressive ink from Banmi. If you like pinkish reds, you’ll be happy with this one. The bottle may only be 15 ml, but at $4-5 shipped, it’s a very good deal. The series offers a nice collection of standard colors, and if the rest are like this, you should consider grabbing any that interest you!