Stabilo Opera
If I remember correctly, I think I picked this up either in a bookshop (maybe a Waterstones), or in a WHSmiths. I don’t think it’s been in the collection too long. I only have the one of them I think.
The company
I seem to have covered Stabilo fairly recently when I reviewed their Swano. In fact, it was recent enough that I keep typing ‘swano’ whilst writing this review… but, we are talking about the ‘Opera’ here. (Note, the pencil itself has an accent or acute over the ‘e’ in Opera, but I’m not going to burn the time trying to figure out the best way to add that into this blog post…).
The pencil itself
This is a reasonably distinctive pencil. Not too luxurious, but the white pinstripes on the red pencil are quite nice.
The printing is quite nicely understated, but the almost obligatory barcode is a bit of a blight on the other side. There is a nicely rounded and painted end.
I fairly like this. Nothing over the top, but does not feel too cheap.
How does it write
I was sort of not expecting huge things from the pencil. Not bad things, but I was not expecting too many ‘woo factor’s. Its sibling Swano was OK, and this being a German manufacturer, I was expecting a pretty hard lead. Well, that’s not what I found. What I found was a really nice dark ead that was not so hard to be annoying, light and scratchy. I liked this pencil - nice feel (it had a reasonable amount of ‘drag’, that made it feel like you were really ‘using’ the pencil), and I did like the bold line. Overall, nice. I’d be happy using this on a daily basis. Pleasantly surprised.
Sourcing
I don’t actually remember where I got mine, but I think I have seen these in some of the high street stores. A quick surf shows they are available on the internet, but maybe not that common. They are reasonably priced - far less than £1 per pencil if you buy a dozen.