Justin Gerard

Vile Trickery: My Favorite Mechanical Pencils

Added 2019-03-14 13:00:03 +0000 UTC

Welcome to the Gallery Gerard Mechanical Pencil Review! I love mechanical pencils and use them every day for my drawings. Today I'd like to share with you my review on some of the best (and worst) available to artists today!

For final recommendations skip to the very bottom!

The Test: For this test I used only mechanical pencils in 0.5 size, and that are $15 or less, and are readily available on either Amazon.com, Dickblick.com or Jerrysartarama.com. I used each pencil reviewed here for several days each in a variety of drawing and sketching settings. My rating is out of 5 stars, based on the following criteria:

Comfort and Ergonomics - How did my hand feel after using it for several hours at a time?

Stability/Balance - How firmly did it hold the lead and eraser?

Features - What else does it offer that separates it from the pack?

Quality - Are the components well-made and durable?

Price - How much value does it deliver for its cost?

A Quick Note on Leads:

I prefer to use size 0.5 leads as I prefer the fine detail they offer. I tested each of the following mechanical pencils with the standard leads that came with the pencils, but I also tested them with my favorite mechanical pencil lead: Ain STEAIN leads by Pentel. I find this lead to be less prone to accidental smudges and to break less often. Other leads, such as the standard hi-polymer, are just fine, but I find that I get more clean and precise drawings with Ain leads. If you haven't tried them before I highly recommend them! Available from Amazon (link)

A Quick Note on Erasers:

Not everyone uses the erasers that come equipped on mechanical pencils. (Some artists are just perfect) Well I do need them and I hate erasers that slip, wobble, are made of cheese, or don't actually erase but instead simply smear the lead around on the paper. There are 3 main kinds of erasers I encountered while conducting tests for this review:

The good offer a stabilizing pin to hold them in place and prevent slipping. The great (the Rotring 600 style) are in a very stable sleeve clip made by angels. ...And the bad simply slip down the barrel to be lost forever the second you use them.

THE 0.5 MECHANICAL PENCILS:

Pentel P205

$6
★★★★✩
The Pentel p205 is a rather flimsy and very basic feeling mechanical pencil that is low on features, but comfortable, lightweight and reasonably priced. In spite of the somewhat cheaper feeling plastic barrel I actually love the ergonomics of this pencil. I don't know why, but I can get really lost in a drawing with this pencil. It is really light and just feels like a natural extension of your hand. This pencil is wonderful for drawing, and would get a solid 5 stars from me for its performance vs cost, but the eraser is one of the worst on the market. It is a basic mechanical Z2-1 type, (the "bad" pictured at the top) it lacks a stabilizing pin or anything that can hold the eraser in place, so with any hard use the eraser simply slides down into the barrel and is literally lost forever.
Final Verdict: An excellent pencil if you are an artist who doesn't use the eraser. It is my favorite from Pentel line-up even though it is one of their lowest priced models. Pro Tip #1: you can order packs of good erasers (like the Rotring 600 eraser refills) and they actually fit, so with a little work you can turn this little guy into something closer to 5 stars.
Pro Tip #2: It comes in a variety of colors so if you use different lead hardnesses you can have different colors for each hardnesses.

Pentel Graphgear 500

$6
★★★✩✩
Nice ergonomics and a sturdy housing makes this pencil feel very nice for the cost. The barrel is a plastic hexagonal one that feels very sturdy, but it is slightly smaller than the grip, making it less likely to be able to stop it from rolling when set on an angled surface. The grip is great and offers a very stable point. The metal on the grip feels fine and offers some good balance and heft to the pencil. It's functionality and mechanics feel very solid to me. It is slightly less comfortable than the p205 for me, but more sturdy. However, like the other Pentel's reviewed here, it has a bad eraser and any heavy use of it will result in it getting lost forever in the barrel of the pencil.
Final Verdict: It's good for the price and if you don't use the eraser very often you will like it. I sometimes use these as travel pencils because they are cost-effective for how sturdy they are.
Pro-Tip: Replace the eraser with a Rotring 600 eraser refill to bump this pencil up another star.

Graphgear 1000:

$14
★★✩✩✩
Despite being the top of the line for Pentel, and one of the most expensive pencils I reviewed here, the Graphgear 1000 is easily my least favorite of all their pencils. This may be a surprise as it is often well reviewed and has earned itself many fans.
While the Graphgear 1000 is made from solid materials, it features a tip retracting mechanism, (presumably to keep the metal tip from jabbing you if you were to store it in your underwear). But this elaborate contraption for retracting the lead is more likely to shoot the eraser straight into your eye, (which yes, it has done to me) than it is to transform the pencil into anything useful. Seriously, it nearly explodes every time I use it. The spring could launch a space shuttle. And while the rest of the construction is thankfully solid, I find the grip to be one of the most bizarre, overdone, and uncomfortable of all the pencil's reviewed here. The clasp is also built-in, so if you find it's large size and placement uncomfortable, you're out of luck. I find the overall feel of this pencil to be cumbersome and irritating compared to other pencils tested here.
The eraser is also the same bad unit found on the p205 and Graphgear 500 that cost each of them a star on their reviews.
A Personal Gripe: For me, the true DO-NOT-BUY nail in this pencil's coffin is that the tip has a tiny bit of wobble. From researching this issue online I have learned that this is most likely caused by the retractor function and that this 'give' is normal for pencils with a retractor feature. It's not a massive amount of play, and some users report not even noticing it at all, but it did bother me.
Final Verdict: This is purely my personal feeling, but I believe that the Graphgear 1000 is overpriced and overhyped. Unless you are planning on carrying this with you in a backpack filled with ball-bearings and hammers, I DO NOT recommend this pencil.

Uni Kuru toga .5

$7
★★★✬✩
The pencil offers excellent lightweight ergonomics in a nice, sturdy metal housing. I found it very comfortable to hold and reasonably priced.
I'm told that Kuru Togo translates to "Turning Sharpening" in Japanese and describes an interesting feature of this pencil: The lead rotates automatically as you draw which helps keep the tip a uniform level of sharpness. I like the sounds of this, but in my experience so far, this feature also creates a slight drawback for the pencil: The tip wobbles slightly when you press down. It's not much, but it does bother me during long drawing sessions and it is why I do not find myself working with it very often.
Note: I should mention here that while I found the wobble irritating, my wife Annie (who is an incredible pencil artist) did not find it quite so bad and she produced many lovely drawings with it. It may be because we hold the pencil slightly differently. So while I give this a 3 star review, Annie really likes it and gives it a 4 out 5.
The eraser is excellent and holds up quite well under heavy abuse.
Final Verdict: The pencil feels great and the self-sharpening feature is neat, but the pencil tip has a slight wobble to it, which may bother some artists. I think it's worth trying out for $7.

Rotring 500 .5

$12
★★★★★
One of the very nicest feeling pencil I tested as far as ergonomics go. I really enjoyed the weight and balance and found it the most comfortable pencil to use. The hexagonal barrel may not be for everyone, but I love it. (I actually prefer hexagonal barrels in general since I work on a slight angled surface and they are less likely to slide off) The grip is cylindrical and has an extremely fine metal grain to it. Seriously, it feels perfect. The body is brass and feels very light, yet sturdy and the tip held the lead solid in all my tests. The pencil also comes with a generous amount of lead which is nice. It is just a lovely pencil to work with.
The eraser is really good one and won't slide down the barrel, my only quibble is that it has a little wobble to it for some reason.
The pencil features a lead hardness display, but the fonts are the same color as the background, (black on black on black on slate black) making it difficult to make read. This lead hardness display also spins with any pressure applied to it making it more decorative than useful.
Final Verdict: An excellent, top tier pencil and I recommend it. There are a few others that manage to edge it out with slightly better features and less cost, but it is still one of the very best you can buy.

Koh-I-Noor Mephisto

$15
★★✩✩✩
Coming in as the most expensive mechanical pencil tested, I was disappointed in the Mephisto. The pencil is very light, thanks to the plastic construction, but this does not help the ergonomics, which I found to be very uncomfortable, especially during longer drawing sessions. The most troublesome aspect is a purely cosmetic nameplate above the grip which spins freely when you hold the pencil. It was highly irritating and left the pencil feeling clumsily designed, as if it were made by someone who thought pencils were only ever used as cosmetic accents for your desk. The rubber grip feels really generic and is surprising to find on a pencil in this price range and from this manufacturer. It is easily one of the worst feeling pencils I tested. This is a shame because most other Koh-I-Noor products I've used have been of very high quality and utility.
The eraser is the Mephisto's one saving grace. It is a twist style that was stable, useful and performed very well. I wish other pencils (especially the Pentels) offered this kind of design. It might have been my favorite eraser tested for this review.
Final Verdict: In spite of being the highest price pencil reviewed here it was one of my least favorites. I do not recommend it for artists.

Pilot dr. Grip .5

$8
★✩✩✩✩
While it does have a nice light feel to it (in spite of how bulky it is) I did not love its ergonomics. My understanding is that the pencil is marketed mostly to people with wrist issues and is meant to provide a greater level of comfort for longer sessions. Maybe it does, I don't know, but for my purposes I found the comfort it provided didn't feel superior to any of the other pencils tested. I can only assume I was bamboozled by other reviews that claimed this was for artists. The construction is cheap and flimsy. It is essentially a bulkier Bic pencil, but for 40 times the cost.
The eraser is the absolute worst kind, and whatever it is made out of, it just smudges the lead around on the paper.
Final Verdict: This pencil is not for artists. I do not recommend it.

Staedtler 925

$11
★★★★★
The Staedtler 925's overall ergonomics feel amazing. It has a round, high-quality metal barrel which offers excellent balance, nice weight and a firm lead hold. The metal grip is very fine and I found it to be the most comfortable grip I tested for this review. While I prefer to use the Ain leads, the proprietary leads that come with these perform perfectly well.
The eraser is excellent. I have never had any erasers slips or wobble during several weeks of heavy use.
The 925 features a removable clip and a lead hardness display slider which shows which lead you currently have loaded in it, and this slider actually stays in place for me, something that plagued every other mechanical I tested here. It’s on the high side of my price spectrum, but is absolutely worth it. It’s my only 5 star review here.
Final Verdict: The Staedtler 925 is OUTSTANDING and is hands down my favorite mechanical pencil reviewed here.
Pro-Tip: It comes in 2 colors, and I use a silver one for my 2H leads and a blue one for my 2B leads.

Alvin Draft/Matic No.DM05

$9
★★★★✩
The Alvin Draft/Matic is nice, solid little pencil for a decent price. The lead holder tip is excellent, and the mechanical functionality seems very good. The ergonomics are fine, my only complaint is that the grain on the metal grip feels like coarse sandpaper, and since I support the pencil with my index finger, it literally shreds the cuticle off as I draw. It's like having a tiny chainsaw perched on your fingernail, merrily gnawing away at you. The Draft-Matic has a lead hardness display, which is neat, but it spins around with even the lightest of touches, making it a completely useless feature.
The eraser unit seemed initially to be a bad one, but it actually turned out to be truly excellent (one of the best even) thanks to the solid construction of the barrel that supports it.
However, even with the very excellent eraser, I don't tend to use this pencil because of how the metal grip shreds my fingernail after long sessions. Final Verdict: The Draft/Matic DM05 is a solid pencil with some very minor drawbacks. I recommend it.

Standard Bic Pencils

20 cents each (Basically free!)
★★★✩✩
While being cheaper than water, the standard Bic pencil manages to remain an excellent choice that is widely used by professional artists. I used a Bic Xtra-Precision Mechanical Pencil for this test, but Bic also offers a wide variety of styles for this same unit, some of which offer more comfortable grips or better housings. Honestly though, this most basic version was my favorite for years. It is cheap and flimsy but extremely useful and you don't need to be too precious with it, because again, it's basically free.
The erasers are very generic but do their jobs reasonably well, but they do smear a bit compared to the erasers found on the high end mechanicals here.
Changing the lead and eraser is a breeze and they hold up really well under heavy abuse. There is a reason they are #1 for students and there is absolutely nothing wrong with using them for art!
Pro Tip: My only recommendation is to consider replacing the lead that comes with these pencils with one of higher quality. It's a personal gripe, but I find the lead that comes with the .5mm Bic pencils squeaks ALOT and it drives me insane. More importantly, it is brittle and very prone to breaking. I use Ain Stein leads and find they turn these pencils into truly wonderful tools at an amazing price.
Final Verdict: A wonderful little pencil that is comfortable, reliable and basically free.

Pentel Quicker Clicker:

2 for 8$
★★★✩✩
The Pentel Quicker Clicker is a very reasonably priced mechanical pencil with an interesting feature for advancing the lead: Instead of clicking the top with your thumb to advance the lead, there is a button where your finger rests that you click. This will feel very natural to users of Wacom pens, which feature a button in a similar place.
The materials are mostly plastic and while the new one I bought for this review functioned well, I have older ones that either stopped working or were prone to jamming. The first part to break was always the lead advancement button. (It would remain stuck in the down position.) I am not sure if this issue has been fixed in the new model.
The new version offers a rubber grip, which has a thumbprint style pattern on it that feels decent and is an improvement on the old model.
The pencil offers a clasp, but unfortunately it is built in, so if you prefer to work without one you are out of luck.
Eraser: The eraser works very well and comes in a cup housing (like a larger, stubbier version of the "great" kind pictured at the top) and is highly stable compared to other mechanicals. This added stability is likely due to the fact that the eraser here isn’t doubling as the mechanism for advancing the lead. The eraser also offers an unusually large surface area to work with which I is nice.
A personal gripe: Because of the built-in position clasp and button, I personally do not like the feel of this pencil. Perhaps it is a quirk unique to me, but I tend to rotate the pencil while I work, to help find the very sharpest point of the lead. (As the edge is worn to flat, I rotate 90 degrees to the sharp edge, and when that is worn down I rotate again) It’s something I like to do, but I do acknowledge it may not be a big deal to everyone.
Final Verdict: If you like the idea of using a finger to advance the lead instead of your thumb, this is an excellent and reasonably priced choice. But I personally do not find it comfortable for how I personally work.

Delguard Zebra:

7$
✩✩✩✩✩
This pencil’s ergonomics are fairly bad and offers almost nothing in the way of a grip. The plastic construction feels flimsy, light, and cheap.
The lead that comes with it claims to be unbreakable, which sounded like the manufacturer was daring me to try it. (Which of course I did try. With a hammer. And yes, it breaks.) But it turns out that what they actually meant by “unbreakable” is only for normal use and only if you advance the lead 3 clicks. I found that it did do this as advertised. It achieves this with an interesting spring mechanism that makes the metal lead holder slide down like a shield to support the lead when you press down firmly on the pencil. This sounds great in theory, but it causes some major give in the pencil when you press down hard. I think it is terrible for artists who need solid control over the pencil.
The clasp is built-in and cannot be removed which is annoying.
Eraser: The eraser is trash that literally fell out while I used it. Worse still, it is made out of butter and just smears the lead around. It is absolute garbage.
Final Verdict: It may be fine for writing, but this is NOT a pencil I would recommend for artists.

Tul

2 for 7$
✩✩✩✩✩ (If I could give minus stars I would. It would be -3 stars.)
This pencil is one of the worst I reviewed. The ergonomics are horrible. It lacks balance and rests awkwardly on your hand. It had no grip because the housing was made out of rubber, which the packaging claimed would help provide all the grip a user could want. I found it did exactly the opposite and was one of the hardest pencils to keep from slipping that I tested. The longer I worked the worse it got. Did I cover my hands in vaseline for this review? Did I rub butter all over the pencil first? Are my hands perpetually sweaty? Maybe. But even so, I feel like a pencil should offer something that can be gripped, which is why so many of the higher quality models offer a textured metal grip.
I know some of these pencils I'm reviewing are primarily for people taking notes in meetings, and not for drawing, but seriously I don’t know who could stand to use this for even notes. A lizard perhaps? Was it made by crocodiles? I don’t know, but surely it was not made for human hands. It has to be one of the worst feeling pencils that ever made it into mass production.
The Tul claims that it has some fancy features that advance the lead "semi-automatically". I don’t know if this was true or not as it was constantly slipping. The whole thing feels like it is made out of undercooked noodles and the lead advances awkwardly. Is that what they mean by semi-automatic? Likely this is just the marketing team trying to turn a clear engineering error into a "feature" by using some buzz-word that might leave the buyer associating the pencil with an assault rifle.
In a final insult to the ergonomics, the clasp is built-in, which as you’ve probably guessed by now, I find annoying. However, it’s less noticeable on this pencil because everything else is so shriekingly awful.
Eraser: The eraser is twist style, which I like in theory, but in practice here it causes the whole eraser to wobble around as you use it. What’s worse is that the eraser material is mediocre and you have to press hard on it to do basic erasures. Because the mechanism is very sensitive (or “semi-automatic” as they like to call it,) you are almost surely going to accidentally advance the lead several times during a single erasure. I HATE this eraser and I hate this pencil.
Final Verdict: This is an INTENSELY irritating pencil to work with. My life is literally worse for having tried it. I do not recommend it for artists, or for humans in general.

DISCLAIMERS:

I am not being sponsored by any of these manufacturers mentioned in this post and I was not given any of these pencils. I bought all my own materials for this post from either Amazon, Dickblick or Jerrys. All of them were bought in or before February 2019.
All prices listed here are current to the date of this post.
All the pencils tested here are ones readily available now. I excluded any older ones which are not being produced any longer.
All of these pencils were used for several days of drawings each, and on multiple finished drawings. I also tried to use them in different settings, on a studio table, as well as in an informal life drawing setting in a sketchbook. All of my tests are conducted on Strathmore smooth bristol and on Daler-rownney sketchbooks.
Everyone's hands are different and people hold pencils in all manner of odd ways, so ergonomics are purely my personal taste for what personally feels right for my hand.
Why the $15 price limit? I don't like to be too precious with my materials and I have found that the features and benefits found in pencils higher than $15 are so marginal that they are not worth the extra you are paying.
Why no lead holders? I love working with 2mm lead holders and I plan to do a separate review for those!

If there is a 0.5 mechanical pencil for less than $15 that you think I should try post it below! I will update this post as I try other pencils.

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS: