I'm taking an art class for grad school and needed a nicer sharpener. Had two cheap ones I hated. The reviews seem to heavily favor a couple of Panasonic models, but nobody seems to have them in stock. The next highest rated sharpener was this one, and it had a couple positive reviews, so I ordered it.
Pros:
Weight: Doesn't get pushed back when you stick a pencil in it.
Weight II: The motor is heavy. It takes up about half the volume of the box. It feels like a substantial device.
Motor: Steady and reasonably quiet. Not jerky or wobbly. Doesn't strain during sharpening.
Sharpener: Shaves evenly and smoothly and won't eat pencils unnecessarily fast. Produces nice, long points.
Fit: Standard Prismacolor pencils fit neatly in the hole and won't wobble during sharpening. Seems to be manufactured with rather tight tolerances.
Cons:
Sucker feet: They prevent lift, but not sliding. They should have used regular rubber feet.
Static: The plastic has a tendency to get a static charge and makes shavings cling to the outside when you empty the shaving tray. Wipes up without much trouble.
Summary:
Pros easily outweigh the cons. It performs the way you'd expect a high quality sharpener to perform. I can't imagine I'd be significantly happier with a competing product. X-Acto 1744 Heavy-Duty Electric Pencil Sharpener, Black, 1 Unit
I was a little hesitant to go with this brand as I had never heard of it. Also, at the the time of purchase, this product had only 9 reviews, although all were largely positive.
However, after reading "Truth and Justice's" review, I decided to try this one out. The sharpener is everything he/she said it was. By far, this is the most powerful sharpener I have ever used in my life and I have been in numerous office environments.
To address the complaint of one reviewer that the sharpener eats the entire pencil, let me explain my experience. I just got through a stack of about 30 pencils and my experience is this is dependent on the brand/quality of the pencil. For most pencils, this was not a problem at all and the sharpening came to a natural conclusion.
For a few varieties, it did eat up a lot of pencil, but i realized after a while that the pencils were sharpened long before and I did not always need to get that sense of completion. I would just take the pencil out after a few seconds. As I mentioned previously, this thing is a machine, and if you keep the pencil in there, it will keep sharpening it until you have nothing left. I view this as part of the positive experience.
I highly recommend this unit.
So far this has been an awesome pencil sharpner. I received it quickly. Most important it is durable, when I first received it all my kids were excited to use it. And of course one of them put the eraser end in first...but I was able to pull out the metal piece and it works just fine. Worth the money, wish I would have bought this before I bought the others.
When I was a kid, we had a boston electric pencil sharpener.
So you can imagine my happiness/surprise when I saw "Xacto by Boston" on the box. I felt better about my purchase already, because Xacto means nothing to me, really, as far as pencil sharpeners go. Seeing as how I had just spent a small fortune on a pencil sharpener, I needed something to make me feel better but I had already gone through several manual and one battery powered sharpener and I really needed something as good as the ol' Boston we had when I was a child.
Other interesting details from the box:
1) This supposedly has a receptacle size 7. The largest is a 10.
2) On a scale of 1 to 4, this one is rated for "heavy" use (a 3). The only higher usage is "continuous" (a 4).
3) It has a whopping 2 year guarantee.
4) The box also says "Auto-reset prevents motor burnout". we already used this feature. My kids sharpened about 50 pencils IN A ROW. it was soooo satisfying for them to see a perfectly sharpened pencil emerge each and every time they sharpened (even my wife's friend came by and wanted to sharpen a few). But, they overheated the poor sharpener. it stopped running. Sho nuff, the next day after it had cooled down it was ready for action again!
Overall, i have to say I was VERY unhappy to spend $40 to get a good sharpener, but this one has every indication of lasting a long, long, time.
I would rate this a definite BUY, once you gag down the almost $40 price tag. I wish I had bought it to begin with!
I teach 1st grade and we go through lots of pencils a day. I have had 2 other electric sharpeners and was tired of one side of the pencil never getting sharp enough to expose the whole lead at the end. Kids were picking at the wood all the time trying to get their pencils to work. I researched pencil sharpeners and relied mostly on reviews so I wanted to let all the teachers out there know, this sharpener is my favorite. It is quick and pencils are sharp all the way around and life in 1st grade is all good!!
I use an electric pencil sharpener every single day of my life, for hours at a time. The one I've relied on for years -- a "lesser" X-Acto model -- started to grind and break lead, so I figured I'd splurge and buy a top-of-the-line X-Acto model. This is not, however, top-of-the-line.
1) The blades do not sharpen the pencil. Sure, they hone it into a sharp-looking cone like all pencil sharpeners do -- but they leave a substantial flat end to the point which is, by any draughtsman's standard, not at all "sharp." Maybe this defect was a problem only with the one I bought, but for $40 I would have expected that its main usage would have at least been tested. It is NOT a "sharpener."
2) Most importantly, however, the actual blades are recessed so far into the guts of this machine that you have to reserve 3-4" of pencil to hold before the blades even engage. I frequently use pencils down to 1" or less before I ditch them, so that means I'm losing 1/3 of the life of each pencil. The sharpener I'm replacing (and to which I'm returning, after I return THIS clunker) engage almost immediately upon insertion of the pencil itself.
Yes, this review sounds insane. But if sharp pencils are your life, then don't buy this extremely poorly-designed deep-action pencil-wasting "blunter." - High School - Pencil Sharpener - Professional - X-acto'
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