[Pen/Pencil Review] The Sharpie Liquid Pencil
My friend, Meredith, asked me if I’ve reviewed the Sharpie Liquid Pencil yet. I haven’t, and in fact, I hadn’t used the Liquid Pencil in a while and had to go find it in my massive stash of pens and pencils – or, more accurately, I purloined my husband’s from his desk. We both played with them at one point.
The Sharpie Liquid Pencil is set up like a retractable ballpoint pen with the eraser being the “clicky top” (to quote Scrubs). Retracted, the pencil is 5.75″ long – just and 5.875″ fully extended. It’s a well-balanced and decently weighted ballpoint plastic barrel, the eraser doesn’t seem to get hard and unusable after sitting for a while. The Sharpie Liquid Pencil also claims to be #2 pencil lead equivalent — but if I were a student, I don’t think I’d trust them for a Scan-Tron test of any importance. That’s just a risk I’m not willing to take. But that’s just me. Physically, it’s a decent instrument.
Physically. As for the emotional part of it… yeah, I’m not there. I’ve WANTED to love a liquid pencil for a LONG time. Sharpie is NOT the first company to do this. But they are one of the best. I do love Sharpie for their other products (which I’ll review in time). And I’ve not been impressed yet. The Sharpie is the best one TO DATE, but still not fantastic. I’m not “wowed” by this liquid pencil. I found the ink sometimes glops and clumps. There’s definite skipping – the line isn’t consistent. The “liquid” part of the pencil lead means what’s on the page looks more like ink than pencil. It does erase better than others – like you’d expect with a hard/dark pencil lead.
It’s not a great writing instrument. It’s okay, bordering on good, if you like the novelty of a pen that seems like a pencil. But it’s not something I ‘have to have’. In fact, I think the reason I couldn’t find mine was because I put it in a donation bag. It was a novelty that wore off quickly.
In all honesty, I give it a 2.5 when it comes to bronze pencils.
