Customer Reviews

As someone who has a degree in Industrial Design, I just love highly technical pencils. So I bought two of these (black and silver), and they are now my preferred pencils out of my collection (more than 30, mostly contemporary, with some NOS vintage ones). These are very handsome pencils, especially in black (the silver version is a little less slick looking, just because of the color).

The lead really rotates, and you indeed end up with more even lines and a cleaner writing as a result of the mechanism. The grip area is really well made, out of high quality and precisely machined aluminum, with very precise tolerances; the genuine attention to quality shines! A little window in the the grip area is open to (barely) show a (very) small part of the inner mechanism; on this orange plastic part of the mechanism, there is a printed Kuru Toga logo that wheels past by, while you use the pencil and the mechanism become active.

There is a slightest 'floating point' feeling to the lead, as the little black part on the tip, to which the lead rod is attached (see the close up picture of the nib), is directly mounted to the internal 'Kuru Toga Engine', which is a spring-loaded clutch. That black part hence 'moves' inside the pencil for a fraction of a millimeter (you barely see it) each time you hit the paper, activating the spring-loaded clutch, which rotates the lead. But in all honesty, if you don't concentrate to see it and feel it, you don't really notice. I hope this internal engine is made of wear-proof plastic (such as Polyamide-imides - check it out on Wikipedia), and has been rated to write for a long time, as I sometimes wonder what will happen if the internal clutch's ratchet teeth become dull.

Two things I regret on this pencil: I wish the upper part of the body was also made of the same nicely machined aluminum, and I wish they had put a more, I don't know, "hi-tech" looking clip. Then this pencil would be the p-e-r-f-e-c-t mechanical pencil!

As it is, at the price, this is the best value out there, as far as mechanical pencils are concerned. I plan to buy several more, as I am too afraid that Uni will either stop making this particular model (aluminum is expensive!), or lower the quality of the inner components in the next iteration of the pencils.