About a year ago, I started writing my notes by hand instead of typing them. The goal was to slow myself down and be more aware of my thoughts. Maybe I’ll make another post about how that goes. Today’s post is about the mechanical pencils I use to write my notes down.

I have tried four different pencils in the order described below. Only one of them is my daily driver as of today.

rOtring 600 0.5mm

The capital “o” is not a typo, but rather an interesting choice of a brand name.

Fully metal pencil. Nice grip. The size of the lead is 0.5mm, which is good for fine lines and precise writing. Looks cool too. A bit heavy, though, because it is all metal.

Uni Kuru Toga 0.5mm

It says 0.7mm on the photo but mine is 0.5mm.

It has the same lead size as the previous pencil. Looks incredibly cheap and all plastic. Very slippery.

The main feature of this pencil is that it rotates the lead each time after you lift your hand up from the paper. This feature sounds like magic it keeps the lead always sharp in theory. That’s why I bought it.

In practice, unfortunately, the rotation is not helping with keeping the lead sharp. My assumption is that lead is wearing down quicker (or slower) than the rotation is happening.

Staedtler Mars Micro 0.3mm

Previous pencils and the next one are famous in the mechanical pencils world. This pencil is just a cheap pencil from OfficeWorks.

Surprisingly, it is amazing, and despite its look (it’s all plastic as well), it’s very comfortable pencil. The grip is great, the 0.3mm size of lead is very nice to write with. I would even say it’s the best one. It’s very light as well, especially compared to all metal rOtring 600.

I had never heard of it during my mechanical pencils research and I stumble across it in the OfficeWorks by accident.

ORENZ Pentel 0.2mm

This is special mechanical pencil as it features 0.2mm lead. Even though it looks like it’s all metal, it is in fact very good plastic. Very nice to hold.

The lead size, the feature I wanted it to try the most, turned out to be too fine. It almost felt like I might poke through the paper by accident. The lead also snaps constantly if it’s ejected too far.

Another feature of this pencil is that lead is automatically ejected. You don’t need to worry about pressing that push button on top. But I don’t think I’ve ever worried about it with other pencils.

Pencil I use on daily basis

I write with rOtring 600 as it’s the most nice to hold. I like how heavy it is. I wish they had 0.3mm size.

Sometimes I switch to Staedtler Mars Micro 0.3mm just to feel how nice 0.3mm size is, but I spend 99% of my writing time with the rOtring.