Posts filed under Pencil Reviews

Pilot Mogulair Mechanical Pencil Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

There are some truly fascinating features available in modern mechanical pencils. The features are cool, but the fascinating part is how they manage to make them work in such a small package.

The Pilot Mogulair falls into this category because it manages to fit an "Active Suspension" feature into a slim pencil along with a shake mechanism to advance the lead. All I can say is that I would have loved to have this pencil in school. It would made math homework more tolerable.

At the end of the day, it's still a pencil. Luckily, it handles that aspect with ease. This pencil is comfortable to use for jotting notes or calculations, sketching, writing, and anything else you might need a pencil for. The grip is smooth, but it has plenty of traction for your fingers. Due to all the fancy metal gizmos in the grip section of the pen, there's a nice weight to the pen that's focused in the grip/point area. This gives you more control when making careful lines, but since the rest of the pen is plastic, the overall weight is still fairly low.

The Active Suspension feature of this pen, branding aside, is superb. Basically, if you press down on the lead hard enough, the lead will retract into the protecting pipe to prevent breakage. Several other pencils offer a similar feature (we've written about the Zebra DelGuard several times), but I think the Pilot Mogulair has the smoothest action of the ones I've used. Unless you're writing at an extreme angle to the page, it's unlikely you'll break the lead. It just works!

Advancing the lead also has a fancy method on this pencil. Sure, you can advance the lead by clicking on the eraser cap, but it's more fun to shake the pencil a couple times. There's a small weight in the body of the pencil that causes the lead to advance by one click when it hits the mechanism. Again, it's not a new feature, but the Pilot Mogulair works beautifully. Just be careful not to shake too hard or you'll end up with broken lead pieces in the tube.

If you like your mechanical pencils to have a tiny eraser under the click cap, Pilot has you covered here. There's a tiny eraser located under the cap that can be used for emergencies. It's always best to carry a real eraser, but this will do in a pinch.

The cap that covers the eraser has a delightfully crisp click when you put the cap in place. I've found myself fiddling with it because the noise and feel of capping the eraser is so enjoyable. Hope I don't lose the cap...

When it's time to refill the lead, you do so by removing the eraser cap and the eraser to expose the lead reservoir hole.

The Pilot Mogulair is available in several colors and lead sizes. Ice Blue is featured in this review, and there's also Pink, Violet, White, Black, and Blue. Each of these colors is also available in 0.3mm and 0.5mm lead sizes.

Overall, the Mogulair is a great pencil with some futuristic features. The lead protection works great and the shake feature is a fun gimmick that also works as intended. At under $10, this pencil is a great deal.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on April 25, 2018 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Pilot, Mechanical Pencil, Pencil Reviews.

ystudio Mechanical Pencil Review

I’m a ystudio fanboy. You know this by now. The Brassing Fountain Pen was an instant classic the moment it was released, and they continued to expand the lineup beyond the ballpoint with great items like the Desk Pen.

The ystudio Mechanical Pencil is the most recent addition to the lineup, and, as much as it pains me to say this, it’s not their best effort.

Let’s talk about the good before I delve into what gives me pause about recommending this pencil. First off, it is stunning to look at. The hexagonal brass barrel is refined, and the copper knock sets off the design perfectly. The build is extremely refined, which is a consistent theme across the entire ystudio lineup.

The way this pencil looks is a dream scenario for Patrick Ng. It’s impossible to take a bad picture of it, and it fits into any photo setup perfectly.

As great as that sounds, we buy things to use them - at least that’s what I believe in. This is not the easiest pencil to use, especially for longer writing sessions.

The barrel is wide, which, for smaller motion writing instruments like mechanical pencils, is not a good thing. Added width means added stress if the tip isn’t correspondingly wide. This is why you see very few wide barrel mechanical pencils on the market. And when you do, like with the Pilot Dr. Grip for example, they are designed specifically to help writers with hand and grip issues, like arthritis. The wide barrel of the ystudio has no such benefits. This design would make for an excellent 2.0 mm clutch pencil.

Secondly, you cannot have a continuation of the hex barrel into the grip section of a mechanical pencil. Unless you are using the Uni-ball Kuru Toga, it is common to rotate the pencil in your hand to use the sharper edge of the graphite. When using this pencil, I often rotate my grip right on to a hex edge, which is an uncomfortable writing position. I then have to adjust a second time before continuing to write. I don’t like having to think about that every ten to twelve letters.

“But Brad, wooden pencils are often hex barrels and you don’t have a problem with them?” Correct! The difference is in the diameter. The narrower barrel of wooden pencils helps with that issue, and the hex edges are softer/more rounded. The design benefits wooden pencils, while being detrimental in the case of the wider ystudio mechanical pencil.

A quick glance around the mechanical pencil market tells you everything you need to know about good pencil design. Do any other successful pencils have a hex grip? Nope. There are lots of hex barrels - like the famous Rotring 600 - but they morph into round grips for a reason.

Two minor things worth mentioning as well: There is no clip, and no internal eraser. Neither of those things bother me, although the lack of eraser is an odd choice considering the simple knock design. It’s almost like it is asking for it, yet it’s not there.

The ystudio mechanical pencil puts on a good show. It is fantastic looking, and is a photography standout. But writing instruments are made to be used, and using this one is more challenging than most.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on April 23, 2018 by Brad Dowdy and filed under ystudio, Mechanical Pencil, Pencil Reviews.

Staedtler Mars Lumograph Graphite Pencil Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)

The Staedtler Mars Lumograph Graphite Pencil Tin Box of 20 is a playground of pencils. I love getting to try new writing tools, and the range of this set includes several grades of pencil I've never experienced before. Disclaimer: I am not an artist, so I can't weigh in on the artitude of these. I've focused instead on their build and function. Overall, they're very decent student-grade tools, but they didn't wow me.

The build of the pencil is very good. The body is eco-friendly cedar wood from Germany. It's coated in a smooth layer of blue-turquoise paint with silver stamped labels and branding. It has the classic hexagonal shape, so it doesn't roll but the edges are smooth and comfortable to hold. The lead grade is labeled on every facet of the hexagon, which is very convenient and helpful. They are 7.4 mm in diameter and 7" long, so they should fit nicely in standard pencil cases.

They come in a hinged tin case that has a cozy nest for each pencil, so they don't rattle around. The tin is attractive and sturdy and slim enough to fit nicely in a bag alongside a sketchbook. It doesn't have a very strong snap close, though, so if any warping does occur, you might need a rubber band to hold it closed.

The leads are perfectly centered in the wood, easy to sharpen, and I had no breakage issues at all.

The softer shades are butter smooth and create dark areas without crumbling. They shade well but are difficult to erase and blend.

There are so many hardnesses here that it's difficult to tell the difference from pencil to pencil, but the overall spectrum is dramatic. The middle range is standard, and all work well. The harder leads create lovely soft shades, but I found them to be very scratchy. And not in a "this is a hard lead so of course it is scratchy" way, but more of a "in order to make this visible I have to damage the paper" way. The hardest two feel like trying to write with an actual nail. The feeling did improve after some use and the point was dulled, but every fresh sharpen starts the cycle over. Even the light tones weren't able to be erased totally cleanly, perhaps because the lines were more engraved than written.

I think the big takeaway here is that I prefer softer lead grades, and this set is so broad in scope that it takes me out of my comfort zone. Which is a very excellent thing!

Price-wise, these are at the more affordable end of the range, so they're a great resource for a student artist looking for some dynamic tools. And I'd recommend them to anyone who wants to experiment with a wide range of lead grades.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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