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Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on February 19, 2015The selling point of this pencil is the rotation mechanism so let's talk about it. I'm not too impressed. It works okayishly under optimal circumstances and sub-par under most. The purpose of the rotation mechanism is to keep the graphite point equally as sharpened, and I did three tests to test this. Please see attached image.
Test 1:
This one is done on a sheet of very smooth printing paper. I don't know exactly what paper it is and how heavy it weights (because I only realized after I put everything together that I was given this sheet of paper by a professor). You'll have to take my word for it that it is very smooth; smoother than your budget printing paper. Before I started the point is flat. I held the pencil still so that I don't rotate the whole pencil accidentally writing and wrote out numbers in English. By the word "fifty" the point was getting noticeably dull.
Test 2:
This one is done on a page of a Franklin Mill's Miro soft cover notebook. (I believe the notebooks are discontinued now?) In comparison, the notebook's paper is not as smooth as the printing paper, and by a crude touch comparison, it seems slightly rougher than a Paperblanks notebook by a small amount. I wrote to "thirteen" when the point got noticeably dull from being completely flat.
Test 3:
I decided to do a test on a Paperblanks notebook. I got to "sixteen" before the point became dull from being completely flat. This test was an after thought so my apologies for the lack of pictures.
VERDICT:
Don't depend on the rotation mechanism. It works, but doesn't serve its purpose if 1) you're not writing on super smooth paper; or 2) you write in longhand (because you don't lift the pencil as much if you wrote in longhand). Curiously, as a long time user of pencils, I have a muscle-reflex habit of manually rotating my pencil every few words so I'm not writing on the same side of the graphite, I wonder if this pencil's auto-rotation mechanism will render my habitual rotating counterproductive.
BUILD:
Build quality is solid. I like that the grip is metal and has a nice friction finish, but I'm disappointed that the upper half of the body is plastic, even if very good plastic. As a result of the pencil being half-metal half-plastic, it's weight is very unbalanced. I suppose this isn't much an issue for most since the writing end is the heavier end, which means you shouldn't feel the unbalanced weight when writing, but if you have a habit of spinning your pencils (like me), you won't find much fun in this one. I was curious about the rotation mechanism inside and wanted to take the pencil apart, but unfortunately you can't do that without breaking it, oh well. The eraser is replaceable/refillable, which is always a plus. The eraser also sits in a metal holder so you can pull the eraser out a bit (after some use) and still have the holder sit properly in the pencil.
The selling point of this pencil is the rotation mechanism so let's talk about it. I'm not too impressed. It works okayishly under optimal circumstances and sub-par under most. The purpose of the rotation mechanism is to keep the graphite point equally as sharpened, and I did three tests to test this. Please see attached image.Somewhat disappointed. Rotation mechanism a little gimmicky.
Reviewed in Canada on February 19, 2015
Test 1:
This one is done on a sheet of very smooth printing paper. I don't know exactly what paper it is and how heavy it weights (because I only realized after I put everything together that I was given this sheet of paper by a professor). You'll have to take my word for it that it is very smooth; smoother than your budget printing paper. Before I started the point is flat. I held the pencil still so that I don't rotate the whole pencil accidentally writing and wrote out numbers in English. By the word "fifty" the point was getting noticeably dull.
Test 2:
This one is done on a page of a Franklin Mill's Miro soft cover notebook. (I believe the notebooks are discontinued now?) In comparison, the notebook's paper is not as smooth as the printing paper, and by a crude touch comparison, it seems slightly rougher than a Paperblanks notebook by a small amount. I wrote to "thirteen" when the point got noticeably dull from being completely flat.
Test 3:
I decided to do a test on a Paperblanks notebook. I got to "sixteen" before the point became dull from being completely flat. This test was an after thought so my apologies for the lack of pictures.
VERDICT:
Don't depend on the rotation mechanism. It works, but doesn't serve its purpose if 1) you're not writing on super smooth paper; or 2) you write in longhand (because you don't lift the pencil as much if you wrote in longhand). Curiously, as a long time user of pencils, I have a muscle-reflex habit of manually rotating my pencil every few words so I'm not writing on the same side of the graphite, I wonder if this pencil's auto-rotation mechanism will render my habitual rotating counterproductive.
BUILD:
Build quality is solid. I like that the grip is metal and has a nice friction finish, but I'm disappointed that the upper half of the body is plastic, even if very good plastic. As a result of the pencil being half-metal half-plastic, it's weight is very unbalanced. I suppose this isn't much an issue for most since the writing end is the heavier end, which means you shouldn't feel the unbalanced weight when writing, but if you have a habit of spinning your pencils (like me), you won't find much fun in this one. I was curious about the rotation mechanism inside and wanted to take the pencil apart, but unfortunately you can't do that without breaking it, oh well. The eraser is replaceable/refillable, which is always a plus. The eraser also sits in a metal holder so you can pull the eraser out a bit (after some use) and still have the holder sit properly in the pencil.Images in this review
