Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start by saying, I have been on the hunt for the perfect feel for quite a while. I'm picky. Very picky. So when i find what i like, I'm loyal to it. Sometimes to a fault. but in this comparison I believe I'm being fair and honest. Lert's not mince words.. Rotring is the Rolls Royce of functional mechanical pencils. There are of course much more expensive luxury pencils on the market and I've tried a lot of them. I have not purchased the more expensive luxury versions but I have friends that indulge, so I have borrowed some (they're insane letting me borrow a $4000.00 pencil) for a day just to test. FYI That pencil was actually a set. so that dollar amount bought 4 instruments. it was the Graf von Faber-Castell Elemento Limited Edition set. Now, the luxury pencils need to be eliminated from this review because they are simply not a viable option for 99% of the planet. I think I'd opt for something much different for that price. but not only that, those instruments are built for style and class, not necessarily function. In fact, I prefer the items I'm listing below to any of the expensive items I've tried. I narrowed down my search to a handful. The Pentel Graph Gear 500. The Pentel Graph Gear 1000, the Rotring 600 and the Rotring 800. The Pentel's are nice pencils, and they work great. But frankly they are not in the same class as the Rotrings and that is fairly represented in the price. They don't have the weight and balance. My primary goal was the feel of the pencil. We know they will all work, and honestly i don't care how they work, as long as they do. the mechanism for making them work while great from an engineering standpoint is largely irrelevant from a usability standpoint. My requirement? when I mash the button at the top does lead advance? does it do this consistently? if so, that's all I care about, with one minor difference which I will point out.. The jewel of the Rotring in my eyes is the weighting. These pencils are made of metal. not Plastic (although some of the internal parts are plastic). They are weighted just as I would hope. They feel like a solid instrument and I really like that. in fact, that is the main reason I prefer the Rotring. The differences between the 600 and the 800 are mainly that the 600 lacks the ability to retract the tip into the sleeve, protecting you from shirt pokes and leg stabs. Personally this is not a big issue for me, as I work from home now and i don't carry them around. But even when I did, I didn't find that to be that big of an issue. There is one other difference which is just silly to me. The 600 has a dial indicator you set to note which lead you have in it. HB, 2B, etc. The 800 unbelievably doesn't have this option. I can only assume it's because of the additional movement required for the retracting tip. But to me this is almost a deal breaker. Why? because I have several of the same pencil. The only difference is which lead is in it. So I use the dial. With the 800 the only way I could do this without using silly stickers, would be to only use two. a black and a silver. then just remember which has which. I cannot believe they didn't' work this into the 800. but that alone is almost good enough to choose the 600. The one thing I will say about the retracting tip, the 800 does it right. The Pentel 1000 has this feature too, but it's applied with the clip. You press the top fo the clip and the whole thing pops back based on tension. With the 800 you twist the top of the pencil and it pulls the tip back manually. I don't know why, but I prefer the method of the 800. Neither cumbersome so I don't really know why, other than I tend to be OCD and I found myself clicking the Pentel back and forth like a nervous tick. There are other differences between the 800 and the 600 but I'm not going to get into those that refer to the internal mechanism because again, if it works, it works. BUT, there is one key feature to me that makes one stand above the other. Feel. The Rotring 600 has the perfect balance, period. It feels right. I purchased the 600 before the 800, so I knew I was already a fan, but I was disappointed in the 800. I can't really explain it, but the 600 just has a better balance for me. They appear to be the exact same length. The tips are slightly different and I am guessing the retracting mechanism in the 800 is what throws off the balance. The tips appear slightly different, but not much, though i will admit, I love the gold color of the 800 tip. The 600 does not have this option. I think the knurling on the grip is a little different between the two, but without a magnifying glass I can't see the difference. i think the 800 might have a tighter knurl. Both work fine for me. So in my eyes, if these two pencils were priced exactly the same? i would pick the 600. Now factor in the price difference of almost 50% more for the 800 and it's a no brainer. I like to keep 4 or 5 pencils handy with difference lead hardness. So I will have several of the same pencil with different hardness of leads. What I don't understand is the Rotrings used to have an indicator on the top of the eraser cap for the lead. That is no longer the case. Now they are hollow and you can just see the eraser inside. Then again, I could be mistaken and this could be a feature of the clutch versions that have this cap indicator. I don't think that's the case, but I wish they had this on the 800 so there was some way to distinguish what lead is in it. It's still unbelievable to me that they'd remove the lead indicator dial, but the final difference, and this is pretty small, but something that did bother me. the 600 has a well pronounced click when you advance the lead. The 800 has a more soft click. It almost feels like it's not working. I don't know why, but that bothered me. For me, there is no question. I will buy the 600, especially when I can get two of them versus one 800, and have the lead indicator on them. 800? great pencil. Too expensive. 600? perfect weight, perfect functionality, and perfect price.