The important thing with lead free is you're not looking for the color or texture when inspecting, you're looking for the shape, and absence of any tiny seam or cracks.

It's probably not gonna be 100% shiny, that's fine, it just has to wet effectively instead of just kind of hovering in a blob.

Lead free is the only thing I use unless I'm repairing some old pre rohs era thing I guess, but I generally don't encounter many of those.