My friend first bought me this pencil, and when I lost it I immediately got another one online. This mechanical pencil has a new technology that rotates the lead as you write, giving you a sharpened, even tip every time you touch the paper. All other pencils will require you to rotate the entire pencil itself, or else you will have to suffer the dulled edge of writing too long on one side. I have the blue one shown in the picture, but they also have flower designs, special “high grade” ones that feature metal casing, and ones with alpha gel grips. I was considering the high grades, but they cost twice as much, only the grip is metal, and they don’t show the inner workings of the rotation like the plastic ones do, which is really cool. The 0.5 mm pencils have the orange rotation device like the ones shown in the picture; the 0.3 mm pencils are yellow.
The rotation mechanism works when you press the tip against the paper. The pressure will push the thing inside against some teeth, much like clicking a regular pen if you’ve seen the insides of it, thus rotating it with every press. The teeth are small enough to rotate it just enough to get an even tip with regular writing, and you can’t feel it while writing unless you pay very very close attention to it. Here is a writing comparison between a regular Pentel 0.5 mm mechanical pencil and the Kuru Toga.
You can see very clearly that the UMSA BBQ! line is when I start using the Kuru Toga. These multivariable calculus notes were taken a year ago, and you can see that the writing from the regular lead pencil has faded a bit and is not as sharp as the Kuru Toga’s. The Kuru Toga’s writing has not faded at all.
Holding the Kuru Toga is not very comfortable. The grip is straight hard plastic, with smooth ridges on it. There is another ring of soft gel plastic but it doesn’t help much. The Alpha Gel versions look comfortable though, but not as cool D:<. Also, the writing itself does not feel as good as a regular pencil. Because it constantly has a “new” tip when it rotates, it feels just like writing with a new tip – scratching the paper. I personally like it better smoothed out just a tiny bit, but this is something you’d have to give up if you want a sharper writing edge.
This pencil is very cool, looks very cool, and does what it does very well using any regular lead! The clearer writing is definitely noticeable, looks really good, and hardly fades because it’s etched deeper into the paper. Downsides are it’s not very comfortable to write with (the regular version), and it’s a bit pricey ($7.50 for mine + $6 shipping). Also, a lot of the color has chipped off the sides, and if the piece of lead is too short it won’t attach to the rotation mechanism. Other than that, I’ll be using this pencil forever, but I’ll have to see if the rotation mechanism will last – if the tiny teeth inside will wear out or something else.
Rating: 4/5
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