Customer Reviews

X-Acto School Pro Heavy-Duty Electric Sharpener (1670)

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

I am in the design field, using color pencils a lot. I noticed this well advertised sharpener and it seemed like a nice piece in the pictures on-line. The unit I got is made by X-Acto and has 5 pencil size options and a nice big bin for shavings.

So I bought one to replace my cheap 20 year old sharpener, which cost $18- twenty years ago.

The large bin is nice. But I do have major problems with this unit.

1) Stub results. The angle of sharpening is not sharp enough. A large cutting angle means you have to sharpen more often and have less freedom with drawing with your pencil (sideways). Anybody that claims that a fatter sharpening angle is less dangerous for kids is really not telling the truth, a sharpened pencil is a sharpened pencil. There is no excuse to have such a poor angle, perhaps the mechanism isn't that good a quality. Anyway, trying to draw expressively with stubs is annoying and interrupts the creative process.

2) The pencils never seem to hit right on center, leaving this annoying off-centered wedge down the exposed sharpened graphite point. I have to shove the pencil in at a some angle to try and get it to sharpen on center. Never works right. The wood wedge down the graphite also means more frequent sharpening and interferes with the creative process.

3) My inexpensive 20 year old sharpener is more powerful than this X-Acto sharpener. It sharpens faster and has a narrower sharpening angle.

Conclusion? I don't recommend this piece, it is well below mediocre, in fact I would call it substandard. I'm giving my unit to the kids as I can't return a dirty used piece.

Only buy this pencil sharpener if you want to replace it each year. The sharpener worked very well until the end of the school year and then the blades became dull and would not sharpen the pencils. Hunt Company replaced the blades under warranty. Now that the warranty has expired, they refuse to replace the blades and won't sell the blade replacements. What a shame that electric pencil sharpeners are supposed to be disposable!

I have gone through three School-Pro Sharpeners in four years. When it works, this sharpener is wonderful. It accomodates several different pencil sizes, has a huge shavings receptacle and runs quietly. My first sharpener lasted through two school years. The second one lasted about a year and a half. The company replaced it for free after I complained. The replacement lasted only a few months. They all had the same problem. When a pencil was inserted the the blades would spin, but they didn't sharpen. I think there was a problem with the automatic pencil stop feature. If the company would address this design flaw, I would consider buying another School-Pro.

I ordered this sharpener after reviewing several others. I am a second grade school teacher and needed something that would hold up under fairly heavy use. This sounded like the ideal sharpener...but I was wrong. This sharpener started out pretty good. It sharpened quickly, smoothly and with nice points. In just a couple of months, it has become noisy, vibrates as it sharpens, often sharpens off center (as described by the previous review), and pencil points are much less sharp when it does sharpen correctly. It has a warranty. I'm going to call for a replacement. I'll let you know what customer service is like.

I bought this sharpener because we have a large collection of very thick color pencils which require the largest hole on this sharpener to sharpen. This sharpener works fine.

However, I was rather surprised by its large size. It is twice as tall as most of the electric sharpeners one sees in offices and homes, and it is wider and heavier.

Every teacher at our school got one of these at the beginning of the year. NONE of them made it through March. The internal gears are made of cheap plastic that quickly wear out. While the cutters no longer turn, the units do squeal quite nicely! One star becuase it's the minimum available!

While it worked, this was a great sharpener. The problem is that it only worked for three months. RIP OFF! Don't advertise that it's for school use unless it will last at least one school year. I have a much lower quality model that is going on its third year in my classroom, and it advertises for office use. The jokes on me!

I'm a middle school teacher and bought two of these on the advice of a colleague. Both broke down before the end of the year. So did the two my colleague bought. It turned out she hadn't used one before but was taken by the imposing hero shot of the sharpener.

The company was completely unresponsive to the several phone messages I left.

A hand sharpener works better in the long run. Don't waste your money.

I loved my Boston School Pro. The kids in my class were forever griding away on my old fashioned crank sharpener, and other teachers were contantly complaining about their loud electrict sharpeners that would quickly burn out on standardized testing weeks. With the Boston School Pro, teachers came to my room (or sent kids to my room) to sharpen pencils for the Stanford 9 test. There is a audible difference when students pencils have achieved ultimate sharpness. No more wasting time at the sharpner!

I used this pencil sharpener in my 5th grade cassroom. I never let my students use the sharpener and sharpened all the pencils myself since i had gone through several sharpeners in the past several years. i spent a great deal of my school budget on this item and by January it was no longer working. As a teacher i need reliable products -- this is advertised as classroom use but it did not live up to it's promise. It would be great for someone that is not using it comstantly