Thought I'd add my two cents to the conversation. I have mixed thoughts on this pencil. The finish is nice for a natural-wood pencil. Nice and smooth without obscuring the wood tones. However, I do miss the small amount of weight and substance which seems to be added by the painted finish. Feels a bit "too light" to me, and unbalanced with the chunky ferule/eraser combo on the other end. As for the writing experience, it's decently dark for such a hard core. However, it feels incredibly scratchy and not at all like the experience of the 602. Between the finish and writing experience, one wonders how it's even in the same lineup as the rest of the smooth, dark Blackwings.

Needs quality control. The pencils are wonderful, but such an expensive box of pencils I expect all of them to be in good quality. One was split through, a few others had wood knotches in them. Felt a bit like I got a box of discards.

These pencils are smoothest pencils I have ever owned. The weight of this pencil feels very nice due to the added weight to the end of the pencil because of the metal eraser clip and the LONG eraser. The pencil sharpens very nice and has never broken during sharpening. The wood even feels smooth while sharping. Another positive thing about this pencil is that natural wood "look" of this pencil is made very nice and does not look like I shaved the yellow paint off a Ticonderoga pencil. The pencil holds its just as much as a normal HB pencil but writes very smooth and even darker. This pencil even under the lightest of pressure, writes darker than any HB pencil I have ever used. Compared to the most famous Ticonderoga pencil, the Ticonderoga pencil feels as if you are scratching your nail on a chalkboard when compared to the rich and smooth feeling of the Palomino Blackwing pencil. Not to even mention how aesthetically pleasing this pencil looks when compared to the yellow and green colors of the Ticonderoga pencil. I usually share my stationary products with fellow school mates, but the second I used this pencil, I knew that I wanted to keep every single piece of graphite of this pencil to myself. If this pencil was marked at twice the price, I will not hesitate to buy this pack of pencil again. All in all a 100/5.

Sharpens to a VERY sharp, fine, long lasting point. Not gritty or fragile. This is my “go to” for ridiculously fine detail work. (I prefer the standard Blackwing for marathon writing and the Pearl for most everything though it is softer).

Overall if you like pencils/graphite a lot, it is true that Palomino Blackwings are noticeably smoother and are a different experience than a plain old yellow #2. (In fairness I haven’t tried Tombow or Uni pencils as of this writing)

Blackwing erasers continue to suck, but the graphite makes up for it. I fell in love with Blackwing's extra-firm graphite when they originally created with for Vol. 24 and am thrilled that they decided to make it part of a regular line. (I was down to one box of 24s!) This is my go-to pencil for reasonably dark lines that don't need re-sharpening every two seconds. Just...pick up a few Tombow erasers while you're at it.