The best mechanical pencils for drawing and writing

three mechanical pencils on an angle on an orange background
(Image credit: Uni/Pentel/Rotring/Future)

The best mechanical pencils for drawing and writing enable you to create art and handwritten gifts and cards with extra precision. With mechanical pencils, there's no need for a pencil sharpener. Instead the graphite (or 'lead') sits in a well inside the pencil. As it wears down, you can keep extending it simply by clicking a button. Then when it's all used up, you just insert a replacement.

Crucially, the pencil itself stays the same length, unlike wooden pencils which get shorter as you sharpen them (even with one of the best pencil sharpeners). And because replacement leads are cheap it saves you money over time, because you won't have to buy new pencils.

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Tom May

Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects. 

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