(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)
There are some truly fascinating features available in modern mechanical pencils. The features are cool, but the fascinating part is how they manage to make them work in such a small package.
The Pilot Mogulair falls into this category because it manages to fit an "Active Suspension" feature into a slim pencil along with a shake mechanism to advance the lead. All I can say is that I would have loved to have this pencil in school. It would made math homework more tolerable.
At the end of the day, it's still a pencil. Luckily, it handles that aspect with ease. This pencil is comfortable to use for jotting notes or calculations, sketching, writing, and anything else you might need a pencil for. The grip is smooth, but it has plenty of traction for your fingers. Due to all the fancy metal gizmos in the grip section of the pen, there's a nice weight to the pen that's focused in the grip/point area. This gives you more control when making careful lines, but since the rest of the pen is plastic, the overall weight is still fairly low.
The Active Suspension feature of this pen, branding aside, is superb. Basically, if you press down on the lead hard enough, the lead will retract into the protecting pipe to prevent breakage. Several other pencils offer a similar feature (we've written about the Zebra DelGuard several times), but I think the Pilot Mogulair has the smoothest action of the ones I've used. Unless you're writing at an extreme angle to the page, it's unlikely you'll break the lead. It just works!
Advancing the lead also has a fancy method on this pencil. Sure, you can advance the lead by clicking on the eraser cap, but it's more fun to shake the pencil a couple times. There's a small weight in the body of the pencil that causes the lead to advance by one click when it hits the mechanism. Again, it's not a new feature, but the Pilot Mogulair works beautifully. Just be careful not to shake too hard or you'll end up with broken lead pieces in the tube.
If you like your mechanical pencils to have a tiny eraser under the click cap, Pilot has you covered here. There's a tiny eraser located under the cap that can be used for emergencies. It's always best to carry a real eraser, but this will do in a pinch.
The cap that covers the eraser has a delightfully crisp click when you put the cap in place. I've found myself fiddling with it because the noise and feel of capping the eraser is so enjoyable. Hope I don't lose the cap...
When it's time to refill the lead, you do so by removing the eraser cap and the eraser to expose the lead reservoir hole.
The Pilot Mogulair is available in several colors and lead sizes. Ice Blue is featured in this review, and there's also Pink, Violet, White, Black, and Blue. Each of these colors is also available in 0.3mm and 0.5mm lead sizes.
Overall, the Mogulair is a great pencil with some futuristic features. The lead protection works great and the shake feature is a fun gimmick that also works as intended. At under $10, this pencil is a great deal.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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