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Engadget's back to school guide: Fun stuff!
Welcome to Engadget's Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we're here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. On the menu today are a handful of fun yet practical gadgets, but feel free to check out our Back to School hub for more recommendations in other categories. It's a tough road ahead for aspiring students like yourself (yes, you!), but that doesn't mean one should abstain from any form of entertainment throughout the course. If anything, you'll be needing a few fun gadgets from our Back to School guide to impress your schoolmates -- it's not like your Facebook page will be automagically adding friends any time soon. But as the old saying goes, "work hard, play hard," so we've also thrown in a few picks that'll aid your study. When you're ready, click along for our latest list of awesomeness.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil, the aftermath: it's 'permanent,' not permanent
And so it comes to this, the final bleak chapter of our time with the Sharpie Liquid Pencil. If you'll recall, the Liquid Pencil first increased nerd heartbeats around the world a week and a half ago, when it was launched promising to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and eventually dry like a Sharpie permanent marker. In fact, those were Sharpie's exact words: "Becomes permanent like a Sharpie marker after three days." The world seemed yet full of wonder; our ambition was limitless. We poured champagne and conducted our first hands-on with great success: indeed, the liquid graphite contained inside wrote like a pen and then erased completely. A simple pencil rising to the pages of Engadget -- could any story be more American? But then... tragedy. A week later, we returned to our Moleskine to test the permanency of our earlier scribbles and found that they still erased completely. Yes, given enough squinting and optimism, the argument could be made that the marks were slightly darker, but we'd been promised "permanent like a Sharpie marker" -- was the Sharpie Liquid Pencil nothing more than an elaborate ruse? Our hopes chastened, we clicked off another few moments of film documenting the fundamental transience of our creations, kept our best stiff upper lip, and dispatched a letter to Sharpie, imploring them to explain. Today, we received a response, which we shall reprint in full after the break.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil doesn't dry like a Sharpie
We were pretty excited about the Sharpie Liquid Pencil when we first heard about it -- it uses liquid graphite to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and (supposedly) dry like a permanent marker after three days. Well, it's been just over a week since our first hands-on, and we've got some bad news: we can still erase what we've written pretty easily. If you squint just right it sort of looks like it might have dried a little darker, but it's certainly not Sharpie-level permanence. Sad faces all around. We've followed up with Sharpie to see what's going on and we'll let you know what we hear, but check the video after the break in the meantime.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil writes and erases like a pencil, dries like a Sharpie (video hands-on!)
Doesn't look like we've ever covered a pencil on Engadget before, but this is just too nifty to pass up: the Sharpie Liquid Pencil uses liquid graphite to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and eventually dry like a permanent marker. Sharpie's blog says the Liquid Pencil go on sale in September, but Office Depot has a $5 two-pack with six erasers in stock online now -- and we were charming enough to snag an early review sample. It basically works as described, although the marks don't erase completely clear -- because you're writing with a metal pen tip, there's no way to avoid impressing the paper a little, and the indentations are pretty visible. Still, it's better than any erasable pen we've ever used, and it definitely writes like a decent clicky-pen, so we can't fault it too much. Oddly, Sharpie's blog says it takes three days for the ink to dry to permanence, but the back of the package says 24 hours, so we'll have to see how long our test scribbles last -- we'll let you know. Video after the break. %Gallery-99118%
