Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Ohto Comforcil-2.0 leadholder Review

Just got the full set of Ohto Comforcil-2.0 leadholders from Jet Pens. Colorful, lightweight, value priced, comfortable barrel, and with a built-in lead pointer in its push button. It looks more like a regular mechanical pencil since its clutch mechanism is concealed behind a plastic conical cap. Its built-in lead pointer yielded uneven points, so a reliable lead pointer would be a recommended accessory for this set.
Its 2-jaws plastic clutch performed adequately but felt less secure than a metal clutch mechanism. The Comforcil-2.0 did perform more smoothly once I switched its original scratchy lead for a Faber Castell 9030 drawing lead. Quick tip: if you have vintage drawing leads covered with heavy white oxidized residue, you can remove most of that residue by running the lead through the Comforcil-2.0 a couple of times. Additional photos in Flickr photostream: photo 1 through photo 12.
Nice inexpensive choice suitable for a lightweight compact sketching kit. The 4 differently colored pencils could easily be used with different graphite grades to avoid wasting time switching leads. Since country of origin is not clearly marked anywhere on the pencil's body and its unmarked lead felt rather coarse, I would bet they were probably manufactured in Taiwan or China. Worth trying.
UPDATE: After having used them for a couple of days and gotten compliments from my fourth grade students on their brightly colored looks, I am pretty confident that the kids will enjoy using these pencils in the summer art camp program. Just ordered 10 more of these Ohto Comforcil-2.0 leadholders for my ARTSCool class materials. Btw, its pocket clip is super strong and effectively prevents them from rolling off inclined drawing tables.

2 comments:

dowdyism said...

Great review Alberto. These have proven to be very popular so far.

B2-kun said...

Thanks Brad! I can understand why and I am certainly happy with their initial performance. I am considering them as a possible sketching tool for my upcoming summer cartoon sketching classes.