Monkey King Ultra Thin 4m Paper Rolls, 44mm Slim

A roll fixes one dimension and hands you the other

Every booklet of papers fixes both dimensions. A King Size slim is 108 by 44mm and that is what you get, every leaf, every time. Choosing a paper size is choosing a rectangle someone else drew.

A roll removes half that decision. The width stays at 44mm because that is how the paper was slit at the mill, and the length becomes a scissors question.

Which means a roll is a length tool and nothing else. It cannot make a wider roll. If you want girth rather than reach, a roll is precisely the wrong purchase and no amount of cutting will help, because the one dimension you cannot change is the one you would need to.

What it can do is go past every length the brand sells in booklet form. King Size slim stops at 108mm and the extra long booklets stop at 130mm. A roll has no such ceiling, and the brand's own copy makes the point that it spares you sticking papers together to reach a length, which is the traditional workaround and produces a seam that burns unevenly.

So the honest summary is narrow. If you never roll longer than King Size, a roll gives you nothing a booklet does not. If you regularly want more than 130mm, it is the only clean way to get there.

The listing says the roll is 44 metres wide

Our distributor's description of this roll reads that each 4m roll measures 44m in width, the same as a standard king size rolling paper.

It is a typo, and a good one. A four metre roll cannot be forty four metres wide, and a paper the width of a cricket pitch would be a different product entirely.

The correct figure is 44 millimetres, which the brand's own page confirms in plain words when it describes a slim width of 44mm, just like a traditional king size rolling paper. Elsewhere the brand gives the roll as 4000mm by 44mm, which is the same statement with the units done properly.

We are pointing it out for two reasons. The first is that the same sentence appears on all five colour variants, so it is one pasted line rather than a slip on one page, and anyone comparing listings will meet it repeatedly. The second is that we would rather be the page that reads its own sources than the page that copies them.

The paper weight is 14gsm, the same ultra thin hemp-family weight the brand uses across its King Size range, and our page for the King Size booklets sets out what that number means against the published bands for every other material.

Wood fibres, a hemp leaf, and a colour called Hemp

This is the part that needs care, so we will show you the sentence rather than summarise it.

The brand's own page for the hemp roll says it is crafted with unbleached organic wood fibres and with no colourings or additives, and that each roll contains a single continuous hemp leaf.

Those two halves of one sentence do not agree. Wood fibre and hemp fibre are different plants and different pulps. Our distributor repeats the first half, describing this roll as crafted with organic wood fibres while listing it under the name Hemp.

Here is what we think is going on, offered as a reading of the evidence rather than as a fact. On this brand, Hemp appears in a list of shades. The roll line comes in Green, Hemp, Pink, Unbleached and White. The King Size booklet line does the same thing, listing its colour range as Blue, Green, Hemp, LGBT, Rainbow, Unbleached and White. Hemp in that company looks like a name for the greenish natural shade rather than a claim about the pulp.

That would explain the sentence. A wood pulp paper, sold in a hemp shade, described by someone reaching for the word leaf.

We have asked our distributor to confirm the fibre and we will publish whatever comes back. Until then, if hemp fibre specifically is what you want rather than the look of it, the King Size booklet whose material line reads unbleached hemp paper is the surer choice, and we have written that page in full.

What is not in question either way: there is no cannabinoid in any of this. Whatever the pulp turns out to be, a rolling paper contains no CBD.

Cutting it, which nobody explains

A roll arrives as a coil in a small case, usually with a cutting edge built into the case, and the paper is unbroken from one end to the other. The brand describes it as a single unbreakable leaf, which is accurate and also the source of the only real skill this format asks for.

Pull out more than you think you need. Paper that has been under tension in a coil wants to curl back, and a short length is harder to hold flat than a long one.

Cut square. A cut that wanders by a couple of millimetres across 44mm of width gives you a roll that tapers when you did not ask it to, and the end you seal will not sit flush. If the case has a cutting edge, drag the paper across it in one movement rather than sawing.

Let it flatten before you fill. A freshly cut length still holds the curve of the coil. Thirty seconds under a book, or just pressed on a tray, and it behaves like a leaf from a booklet.

And cut what you will use now. There is no reason to cut five lengths in advance, and loose cut paper in a pocket creases in ways a coil never does.

Where this sits in the aisle

Against the brand's own range, the roll is the specialist. The King Size booklet is the everyday paper, the papers and tips booklet is the same leaf with a tip section bound in, and the pre-rolled cones remove the rolling entirely. The roll exists for the one job none of those can do.

Across brands, the closest thing we stock is the Juicy Jay's hemp paper roll, which is a flavoured, printed paper in a longer roll, and a genuinely different product despite sharing the format. Our page for it does the arithmetic on how many papers a roll is worth, which applies here too and which we are not going to repeat.

If you want the roll format in something closer to a traditional unbleached paper, the Unbleached and White versions of this same roll are the siblings, and as the table above shows, neither of them states a fibre at all.

Who should buy something else

If you only ever roll King Size, this is a slower way to end up with a King Size paper. The booklet is the same width, the same weight and already cut.

If you want a wider roll rather than a longer one, nothing here helps. Width is the fixed dimension. A blunt wrap or a blunt tube is the format that goes wide.

If you are buying specifically for hemp fibre, wait until the question above is settled, or take the King Size booklet whose material line says unbleached hemp paper.

If you dislike fiddly jobs, cutting paper straight in poor light is a fiddly job. Pre-rolled cones exist precisely so nobody has to.

Over 18s only.