PILOTColor Eno 0.7mm Automatic Mechanical Pencil 8 Color Set

I purchased these to have an erasable alternative to color pens and preferred mechanical pencils to those that require sharpening. This was one of the few if not the only one available. I located a couple of individual mechanical pencils with limited color options. This was the only set I could find with the most color options available. It's nice that they come in a set and at an acceptable price. If some reason one is lost or breaks I don't see an option to replace just one of the 8 pens. They are inexpensive enough to buy an entire set when comparing the price to buying an individual mechanical pencil that it may not be a big concern. If it is important that a set contain matching pencils then buying a new set appears to be the only option. Another option is to purchase individual mechanical pencils in a more customized fashion with barrel colors to match. From what I've determined the cost would be considerably more expensive to purchase 8 individual pencils rather than this 8 pack (depending on the brand and the quality of the pencil).As of this review I've had them a little less than two weeks and started using them immediately to see if they would be a good fit for my habit of use. The pencil itself is typical of mechanical pencil quality in my experience. There has been no experience of jamming. On occasion I can be heavy handed and like any other mechanical pencil lead it can break but haven't had too much breakage. If you're heavy handed on any mechanical pencil there will be breakage but again no more than any other mechanical pencils I've used. The .7 lead size seems to hold up better. I've typically gotten .5 lead for finer lines now I prefer the .7 over the .5.As some reviewers have stated some of the colors are lighter than others. The yellow is the lightest and the text is difficult to read much like a highlighter near the near of life is light. I tend to favor the yellow for use as an erasable highlighter if needed. Just color over the text to highlight. The green lead seems to be the next lightest in my opinion more readable than the yellow but still light. The blues, purple and red are the darkest. The orange and pink are readable lighter than the three previously mentioned colors and darker than the yellow. They do erase easily at least in my application. I use them for making notes/highlights in Bibles. Any of the colors will show up in contrast to white pages. Writing on any colored pages other than white would be difficult to read.The packaging of the pencil is a very thin plastic with a light tacky seal. The packaging doesn't have a snap or is the plastic thick enough use to store the pens. when I opened the box I noted the plastic is so thin the pencils easily move around in the packaging. There was no damage and packing was sufficient just a note if this was of importance to some.Before purchasing it was important to determine availability and cost of replacement lead. Local office stores do not appear to carry replacement leads in store or online. Amazon seemed to be the only seller (through various retailers) offering this lead and it is the "ENO" same as the pens. The cost can be somewhat expensive compared to purchasing the same amount of standard lead for any mechanical pencil. It is less expensive to purchase the 8 color replacement set. If a particular color is used more frequently then this may be the better option than buying the entire site.All in all I'm satisfied with this pencil set. The most important is to have multiple colors with the ability to erase any mistakes. Not sure how anything written will hold up over time (i.e. 1, 2, 10 years) but that will have to come with time. Each pencil comes with only 2 pieces of lead in each so depending on your usage you may want to order additional right away.

I'm an artist and was looking for products that had colored lead and would also erase. These are beneficial if you want to draw a sketch and then use a pencil to clean that sketch up -- though most of the time I leave the end result I get with these pencils because I just love the way they look. The leads are incredibly smooth and glide easily across the paper with little to no drag. They are a little lighter in color than I expected, and if you bear down too hard on them, they break fairly easily. However, these minor issues don't really detract from my using them.The pencils themselves are very fine quality. At first I considered just buying the packages of lead and loading it into pencils I already own, and that certainly would work, however, I have appreciated having each color in its own pencil and at the ready when I need it. While I swapping colors in an existing pencil wouldn't be a total dealbreaker, these are much more convenient. My only real complaint is that there's about an inch worth of lead that can't be used once a piece runs out -- I'm not sure if it's the pencil or the lead or what it is, but for some reason the pencil won't grab the next piece of lead, even if what is left of the previous piece is not long enough to fit into the feeder. In most mechanical pencils, the pencil will grab the next piece and push the previous piece out enough to use it up, however that doesn't seem to be the case here for some reason. Again, not sure why this happens, and it is my only real complaint -- it still wouldn't stop me from using these pencils.Each pencil comes with a few pieces of lead only, so I would highly recommend going ahead and buying the eight-pack lead refills to go along with it when you order.While I use these pencils for art and highly recommend them for that purpose, I believe they would also serve other purposes well as well, though I cannot attest to that fact as I only use them for drawing. While they do erase, they also don't have the habit of smudging like graphite does, so if you needed to write something semi-permanently, they would be perfect in those applications. Overall, I highly recommend them!