Sanford Prismacolor Premier Graphite Drawing Pencils with Erasers & Sharpeners, 18-Piece Set

The best pencils I have ever used...

Great and smooth pencils

The graphite pencils were all broken, when exchange was done again received broken pieces, the packing was a problem or may be the tin box will always break the graphite pencils, the quality on pencils are too good too soft the sharpener is old rusty sharpner not worth the price of the box, but yes the pencils quality is world class

Pencil broken

Excellent selection of drawing pencils.

Physically, this case is much larger than I'd expected, which is probably on me since it shows how many pencils are in it and I know the average size of a pencil. To be precise, it's 6 inches wide by 9.5 inches high. That puts it a tiny bit larger than most of my travel sketchbooks, but small enough to fit in any bag I've tried. Because this has woodless pencils, I would advocate for keeping some kind of cloth with the kit. Even touching the sides of them is messy. Also, this kit doesn't come with a blending stomp. The plastic tray that holds the pencils can lift out easily, and underneath is just enough room for a small cloth and a large stomp. It might hold a small water brush (useful as this has some water soluble pencils) but I don't have one small enough to test. I like that it's easy to get any of these pencils separately. I'm going to use up the 2B much faster than the 6H so I can just pick up a pack of those (Amazon usually carries packs of 12 for each of the weights) and only refill what I need. I might swap out the 6H altogether for a 4B, which this set doesn't include (or I could hide one of those under the plastic tray). The flexibility is cool here. The sharpener is excellent, which I didn't expect. This comes with an unsharpened 8B pencil. 8B is difficult under the best or circumstances, and I didn't think the tiny sharpener they threw in would be able to handle it. It did, no breaking on the first go. I'm not sure why this needed two erasers. Both are fine. Neither smudges. Both do an excellent job. It was probably a matter of figuring out what to do with a chunk of empty space. Overall, I love this. It's a great portable set for sketching on the go.

They are amazing, BUUUT, 2 of the Woodless Graphite pencils were broken during shipping. They're still useable in pieces, it is what it is. Cold climate and not much protection is provided by the metal pencil case lid which they can freely rattle against on the inside. The shipping box was more than adequate, there was only a tiny strip of bubble wrap inside the box which allowed the case to shift around during transport.

While Prismacolor isn’t known for its graphite pencils, this is a serviceable set in a nice tin that has almost everything you need, minus perhaps a tortillon or two. Not the greatest quality and the leads tend to be off center with the wood pencils, but the hardnesses seem accurate and the addition of the aquarelle pencils was a nice surprise. Overall a good set for on the go drawing and sketching.

Bought for my adult son who has been sketching/drawing for as long as I can remember. Prismacolor has always been his choice brand in colored pencils, but he had not tried these before. He loves the variety of the pencils in the set and loves that they come in a tin to store them in. I read other reviews before buying, and I was unsure whether I should get them or not after reading that so many people were having trouble with the pencils arriving broken or with the erasers melted, and with leads missing from pencils or being broken inside, making them impossible to sharpen. Since he has loved the Prismacolor brand for so long and I know that they've always been a trusted brand, I went ahead and got them. He has been using them regularly since he got them with no problems. I'm not an artist myself, so I don't really know all of the technical terms for the different lead numbers or anything, but he does love the variety and says that it's very easy to draw different darknesses, especially of shading. This turned out to be a great gift after all the concern about the leads and not being sure about them. I'm glad I took the chance, and I would definitely buy these again.