I have used these colouring pencils ever since my first year in high school because, while they may be expensive to buy in the first place (costing around £8 for 12 last time I looked) they last for quite a long time, sharpen well (meaning that you don't keep ending up with broken wood at the top of the pencil where it's cracked when you were sharpening it) and the colours are vibrant and look just like the end of the pencil suggests they will look like.

One thing that I particularly like about these pencils is that each one is numbered so that you know which of the pencils would be darker or lighter, for example if you had two of the same sort of a colour you would know which one is closer to yellow and which is closer to blue on the colour wheel.

The end of each pencil is coated with paint that represents the colour of the pencil when you use it. I think that this is another handy element to these pencils because sometimes the colour of pencils isn't exactly what you expect, and this can result in a ruined piece of work if you've grabbed the wrong one by mistake. This has very rarely happened to me, and has been more due to me picking up the wrong one, I think, rather than the colour being any different to what it says it is on the pencil.

In terms of actually using the pencil, they are easy to grip because they are ridged around the sides all the way up the pencil, but they are smooth enough not to cause any discomfort. The colour from the pencil comes through quite vibrantly right from the start, which is good because some pencils need a lot of repeated colouring in order to get a strong definition of certain colours, but this simply isn't necessary with these pencils. They are quite easy to blend together as well, which means that if you can't afford to buy one of each pencil colour (and let's face it, who can at those prices? - £58 for 48 pencils (Amazon price) and that's not even the full set of colours!) at least they are still blendable.

As a side note, I personally like to use a Derwent eraser alongside these pencils in case I make a mistake, as they are able to erase the coloured pencils as well as normal drawing pencils, which I think is always a bonus. It doesn't smudge the colours into one another either, so if you're thinking of purchasing these I'd recommend getting one of those erasers too (if the set doesn't come with one, that is, as some of them do!). They only cost aboiut £1.50 on Amazon, and they're certainly worth it.