PENTEL Automatic Pencil, TPCP207

A great pencil BUT you are buying into a lifetime of refilling it, which is annoying.

Always a reliable pencil. I had my previous one for 7 years until someone stole it off my desk.

It has a good grip and feels comfortable to hold.

I use mechanical pencils for drawing. Until recently I hadn't drawn much since my childhood and early 20s and in getting back into it I have gravitated towards the use of mechanical pencils to save endless sharpening and smudges and because I enjoy using them.After much research I bought a set of Pentel P200 series pencils (among other pencils) and I use them regularly.The P205, along with the P205, is probably the one I use most, it being the most versatile and all-round useful, in my opinion.Given that all my P200s (and other mechanical pencils) have HB leads I wanted to try other grades of lead to make shading and other effects easier and to be able to switch easily between the two. Following the advice of an artist on Youtube who uses these pencils I decided to buy a P205 in another colour (to the standard black) to put 2B lead in and for it to be easy to remember which is which because of the colour.A simple aim?Not really, Pentel don't make it easy as non-black P205s are not readily available in the UK so you pay a premium for coloured ones, which are generally country-specific special editions and are likely to be imports. I would have dearly loved a metallic blue one but couldn't justify the price of that unfortunately.The pencil: for those unfamiliar the P200 series design is a simple, plastic, vaguely hexagonal-shaped body, very lightweight mechanical pencil with a push button to release more lead and with an eraser under the push button cover.Yes, it lacks the ingenuity of a Pentel Orenz or Uni Kuru Toga, both of which I have, but it just works somehow.I find all the P200s comfortable to use good for drawing (within the current limits of my artistic abilities!) and easy to pick up and just get going with.Make no mistake there are professional artists who have drawn fantastic artwork with these, though they would initially been seen as draftsmen's (or draftwomen's) pencils and being slim wth the lead sleeve extended beyond the conical nib(?) part they work well when used with a ruler as you would expect of a tool designed for that function.They are fairly ubiquitous and much copied but strangely they are less visible in physical shops than you would imagine (unless that's just the ones I have been in), which seem to favour chunkier designs or Bics and Staedlers.It is a very slim pencil and I am okay with this and also the chunkier Kuru Togas and Pilot Enos that I use.For extended use though I think I'd get less hand fatigue with a P200 series pencil.This order:It arrived quickly but in fairly minimal packaging. Okay that meant it got through the letterbox but so did another pencil I ordered from elsewhere, which had a better padded envelope. You have to remember that it would not take much for the lead to break and the pencil itself is only plastic so this does matter.From what I can see it came with 4 or 5 HB grade leads inside it.Like many of these pencils it came without any individual packaging. This is annoying if bought as a gift (the Pentel Orenz 0.2mm I bought elsewhere was individually packaged and was much more presentable). It is also annoying because like my other P200s it meant that the pencils have a bar code sticker on them. I'm guessing this pencil has been hanging around for a while as the sticker was an absolute nightmare to remove and it left a sticky residue which took an age to get off. I presume these are bulk bought loose or boxed (for shops etc.) which might explain the price of this one, though to me it does reduce the value of the pencil as the coloured versions are already a bit dear for what they are.The colour, as others have already said, is not really red and is certainly nothing like the picture, which the seller should update with a more representative one. It is, as some have said, more of a burgundy. I don't mind that but if you are looking for the gorgeous metallic red version that you can buy in Brazil and which the picture resembles- this isn't it!PROS:great, simple design that is really good imho for drawinglead breaks (for me) are very infrequent but not as few as the Kuru Toga (none so far)light and comfortable to hold and to use for long periodsnot black so I can find the lead grades I want easily!not the dearest of the non-black P205soddly it comes with a tool (attached to underside of the eraser) to remove blockages - 'odd' because usually only the P203s have these - bonus!CONS:not individually packaged so barcode resides to remove and minimal packagingnon-black P200s are all bit dear really but Pentel are themselves somewhat to blame for that due to them not being a standard UK item. In mitigation you can pay much more than this seller is charging.It is only sort of red (see photo taken against a red folder). Enough people have pointed this out by now that the picture really ought to be updated without delay. The burgundy is growing on me but it is (see photo) a bit too close in colour to my brown P203s and could easily get mixed up inside a pencil case.eraser is nice to have but is a bit rubbish tbh. By comparison by Pilot Enos have an eraser which is finer, whiter and erases very well.Overall I can thoroughly recommend the Pentel P200 series and (for me) the P205 in particular as a great all-round choice.If I could have only one mechanical pencil it would be a P205 or a Kuru Toga - both have their merits and both are good choices. You do pay a premium for a non-black version and that is annoying, especially when it comes unpackaged, but Pentel are in part to blame for that.Would I buy it again if lost? Yes, or maybe another colour if I felt I could justify the price.To the best of my knowledge though this is probably as cheap as you'll find a non-black one anywhere so you will have to decide if burgundy is your thing. In poor light it looks a dull, dark brown but in bright light it's quite nice. Just not as nice as the red in the picture would have been.

Excellent

Always like these pencils. Have used for years. Very reasonably priced and environmentally friendly as spare leads can be bought.

Speedy handling of my order. Excellent.

I wonder that images show a case for the pencil but there isn’t any. The pencil is simply in a plastic bag. It is not fair.