Pentel Graphgear 500 vs Pentel GraphGear 1000

The $3.50 price swayed me. And, happily, the leads don’t break more than my 0.5mm pencils

Nice steady an functional lead pencil. Pricy! Not sure if I could support that price hence the reason for 3 stars. If not for the price 4.5 stars, would of been my grade!

This is a nice pencil for the money. Nice weight towards the writing part of the pencil. Smooth action in advancing the lead. The metal knurled part feels nice in your hand, much better than common cheap mechanical pencils do

It's certainly heavier compared to the plastic body of a papermate (hence the 4 stars), but not too bad and I love that I won't be throwing it away. I might actually buy 1-2 more to make sure one is always at hand.

None of those worked for me. What did work for me was the Prismacolor Magic Rub erasers and I keep one in my apron. They aren't perfect but they do a good enough job that some light planing or sanding can clean up easily.

Sadly, there just doesn't seem to be a pencil out there that meets this. Ironically, Pentel makes a few different erasers in a pencil like casing. I guess if I wanted to carry multiple things in my pocket I could carry them both, but I'd prefer if they figured out how to put both of them together in one writing instrument. But back to this pencil, its eraser is small and useless, but no more so than its competitors, so it stays in the pole position for the pocket pencil

After I slipped one of my empty ballpoint ink pen's foam sleeve onto this mechanical pencil it went from being a good pencil to a great pencil. Very easy to hold and use for writing notes or drawing forms. I am a wannabe woodworker so I draw many different shapes and forms for something I am trying to make and this pencil is very good for this type of work. Before the use of that foam sleeve I mentioned, your fingers would be holding onto the ribbed metal barrel and is somewhat uncomfortable to hold while doing my thing

I am not talking about the reliability itself but about how comfortable it is to use. This pen allows you to do more with much less effort !! 2) You can hide the sharp and sensitive penfront inside the pen. While this may not be an obvious advantage, consider that you may accidently drop it once during its lifecycle. The fact that the pens tip is hidden on the inside does not only protect your investment itself it also somewhat lessens the likelyhood of an actual damage to your other inventory, your expensive new shirt - or worse an injury to a family members eye (kids) etc