Penxo Pencil review

Penxo Pencil Review

1 June 2016 By ian

Penxo Pencil review

The Penxo is a clutch pencil with a difference. Originally a Kickstarter campaign, which is where I bought mine, it’s now available for pre-order direct from the manufacturer.

Penxo Pencil branding

Price: $29 (includes 12 leads and a mini lead pointer, which isn’t all that good but at least it’s nice to have something)
Lead size options: 2mm only
Barrel options: silver, black, gold, grey
Size: 13.7cm long, 1.0cm across
Weight: 17g

There is no denying the simple minimalism of this pencil. It’s a single piece of aluminium that looks not unlike a pair of tweezers. It works like tweezers, too, gripping the lead at its nose.

Penxo Pencil ready to draw

The lead is gripped firmly and once you have some lead deployed it’s as easy to sketch and write with as any other pencil. The design has the added benefit of making it easy to see how much lead you have left, too.

Penxo Pencil with the lead inside

There are some big compromises with such a simple pencil. Deploying the lead is really fiddly. You have to press or pull the two halves apart, pull or wiggle the lead out, push it back when too much comes out, then release the two halves and hope the lead is still straight. Perhaps with time it’ll become second nature but I wouldn’t count on it. A less significant issue is that you can only hold one piece of lead in this pencil at a time. With a traditional clutch pencil you can add a second piece of lead as your first one gets shorter so you never run out.

Penxo Pencil lead retracted

I’m glad someone came up with this idea and made it. I’m glad I own a Penxo pencil because it looks interesting and it’s clever. It’s fun to show it to people. Now I’ve written this review, I will probably never use it again.

Penxo Pencil pointy bit

Pros

Really interesting design
Good to use once you’ve got it set up

Cons

Difficult to deploy the lead
Only holds one piece of lead

Penxo Pencil with notebook