Pilot Automac Mechanical Pencil - 0.5 mm - Black Body

Well, all you people that keep buying this thing and making it go out of stock in one day could at least leave a review, couldn't you? Guess I'll do my own, after 4 attempts at getting one of these.

I was really interested in this pencil due to the fact that I love to use 4B lead, and it's rather annoying to have to keep clicking the feeder between every sentence or partial drawing.

While the Automac does a great job of automatically advancing the lead, it is a little weird how it does it, and I'm not sure exactly how it works, and I'm not quite sure if I like it yet or not. Based on my observations, while continuing to write when the lead is almost gone, the lead sleeve will slightly back off of the lead, to allow you to continue to write, and then as you lift up on the pencil, it will advance the lead, however, it is just barely out of the lead sleeve.

This causes a little bit of a strange writing feel, in that if you don't advance the lead yourself, you are always writing with the lead just barely sticking out of the lead sleeve. Sometimes this can cause the lead to not mark as dark of a line as you'd like, depending on the angle at which you hold the tip. If you are really slanted, when you write, this will be more of an issue, however, if you write almost vertically, it won't be an issue at all. I played around with it, and am satisfied with the movement of the lead when auto advancing. It's just something to be informed about.

As far as quality, it is a well designed and manufactured piece. At first, I thought the black portion was metal, but when I got it, I thought it was plastic, until I took it apart to inspect it. It appears to be made out of brass, and then painted with some type of really hard enamel paint. It is really glossy, and has a kind of sparkle to it, which is cool. The grip is also interesting, it is not aggressive like some others I've used, but still has enough of a grip to be useful, frankly, it almost feels soft, even though it's made out of metal, quite a different feeling than expected.

I also did not know that the tip is retractable, like a ball point pen, not just allowing the sleeve to slide back in, it's like the vanishing point pencils, which is really nice. Click gently to advance the lead, click more firmly, and it retracts the tip and a significant amount of extended lead back into the body. Pretty nice bonus.

The clip is really firm, a little more firm than I'd like, but it may keep you from losing it, if you actually put this in your shirt pocket. I put mine in my messenger bag pen slot, and it's somewhat difficult to get in the pocket, clipped in, at least.

I'm really happy about this purchase, and it will probably be my go-to pencil for a long time.

I really want to love this pencil. I carry this and a TWSBI Vac700 fountain pen. My main reason for carrying a pencil at all is for occasions when I might need to erase something I have written, otherwise I use the fountain pen. The problem is that anytime you use the eraser you end up inadvertently advancing the lead. You have to be very conscious of the amount of force you are placing on the eraser to prevent this, sometimes resulting in poor erasing. I have literally had a centimeter or two of lead sticking out in some circumstances after looking at the lead after erasing something.

The lead is advanced by a sleeve that is pushed when the lead gets low enough. However it is also advanced anytime extend or retract the tip. So if you find yourself clicking the back of the pencil to extend the tip only to write a line or two, you will essentially advanced the lead three times, once for the initial extension of the tip, once for the retraction, and a final time for the next time you advance the tip to write.

Between the eraser issues and the lead advancement on clicking the back of the pen, I find myself snapping off a lot of lead, which can get expensive if you use good lead.

All that said I still love the way this pencil feels in my hand. It has a great weight to it, is well balanced, and has a fantastic grip on it. Based on the inevitable lead breakage, I have to dock it a point thought and give it a 4/5.

If there is ever a pencil that has this build quality, with tip advancement like this minus the lead advancement issue, and with the kuru-toga engine, I'll give it a try instead. Until then I guess I'll just keep dropping more money on excess lead.

The lead sleeve has to come into contact with the paper in order to advance the lead, and then only a very small bit of lead is advanced. Otherwise it's a nice looking pen with a solid feel, but of little use to me.

I returned the first automac because it stopped advancing the lead. The second unit worked for a little longer but again stopped advancing the lead. Unfortunately it lasted long enough to prevent a refund rather than a store credit. Was a great pencil when it worked, but turned out to be an expensive mistake.

What i like: the balance and weight feels just perfect for me.
What i am disappointed in:
1) for the cost of this pencil it should work as designed. I bought it mainly for the retractable tip. After a few months of using this pen that feature no longer works. Maybe i just received a bad sample?
2) The barely useable lead advance has been already mentioned.

If this was a $10 pencil i wouldn't even do a write up about it's failings. But at $50 i think these flaws deserve mentioning.