So these Palomino Blackwing’s have been touted as the best pencils in the world. Here I have the 602 and the Pearl. The Pearl is a harder lead and has a small shading range so I ended up using it just for darks. The shapener works in 2 stages, one stage strips the wood and the other only sharpens the graphite for a super sharp point. The erasers on these pencils are also removeable. Those were the best part, it was cool using the corners for erasing with great detail. As cool as these pencils are, I’ll probably be sticking with my mechanical pencil because this is 2014 and technology is amazing.