Helix Metal Desktop Sharpener for Standard and Jumbo Pencils (Assorted Colours)

Product Information

In his previous career as a dendrochronologist, he spent many an hour staring through a microscope at tree cores marking out rings narrow enough to barely accommodate a single dot with a pencil. The X-ACTO School Pro Electric is a workhorse pencil sharpener made for high volume usage across a variety of pencil types, including color, graphite, and charcoal of varying hardnesses. This machine helps combat oversharpening (and thus, pencil waste) by disengaging the "fly away" spiral blade once it achieves a fine point. Despite how impressive we found this sharpener, the suction cup feet often required resetting on our smooth desktop.

Q-Connect Desktop Pencil Sharpener KF02291 - Black Q-Connect Desktop Pencil Sharpener KF02291 - Black

The palm-sized sharpener easily fits into a briefcase or tote, and the clear shavings bin allows you to see when it's time to empty the filings. Both sharpeners are likely to impress because we saw them effectively sharpen all lead types, including the challenging charcoal pencils. Conversely, the OfficeGoods sharpener requires you to be alert when bringing pencils to a point because the machine does not effectively stop sharpening when the desired angle is reached. If you don't have a place to mount it or you don't want to put screws into your wall, then it's not for you. We looked at everything from size, shape, and the lead type that the machines can accommodate to their noise output, durability, and sharpening time.While we like the look of the Personal, the tapered sidewalls make emptying a full tray a messy affair. Namely, these were round, hexagonal, and triangular-shaped pencils with lead types of graphite, color, and charcoal.

Pencil Sharpeners | WHSmith Pencil Sharpeners | WHSmith

Both units are travel-sized and offer a fair amount of flexibility to sharpen different pencil types.Under each of these broad categories were carefully designed tests to provide a full understanding of each machine and who it will best suit. So, if you're looking for an electric model that can be used one-handed and looks interesting to boot, this is the ticket. Although the desired head on a pencil is an individual preference, we provide all of the details so that you can choose the right sharpener for your needs. The machine sharpens fairly fast (7 seconds for an 8 mm graphite pencil) and, perhaps best of all, you can set the tip angle to blunt, medium, or sharp to match your intended use or preference. Nonetheless, this machine will sharpen most charcoal pencils as well as achieve beautiful tips on round, triangular, or hex graphite pencils.