Westcott iPoint Heavy Duty Electric Pencil Sharpener for Home, School, and Office

Great quality. I use this in my classroom. Its held up well.

Great customer service! My sharpener quit working. After talking to customer service, they were quick to send me a replacement.

I’ve had this pencil sharpener for a while now, being an art teacher it is used quite often. It’s held up great and stops ones the pencil is sharp! I would definitely purchase another. Good sharpeners are hard to come by.

Other reviewers are right - this thing is quiet! Quieter than my manual Boston. And it shaves tips quickly AND smoothly. (If you're a woodworker, you'll recognize that this thing makes clean, rather than rough cuts.) If you're crazy or fussy enough, you know that some sharpeners, compared to others, leave the wood SMOOTH. This one leaves your pencil smooth, which suggests to me that the cutters are working cleanly - sharply - efficiently.Oh, and did I mention the 10 year warranty? Other "good" sharpeners have a 2 or 3 yr warranty.I spoke to a Staples rep on the phone because my wife's electric sharpeners are all worn out. (She teaches 3rd grade, and has 3 sharpeners. The motors are weak and get hot, and they all sharpen unevenly, and break lots of leads.) I was inquiring, were any models rated (i.e. duty cycle) for a classroom (i.e. continuous use). I was told that her Staples School-Smart, and X-Acto 'Class-Happy' (I paraphrased that 2nd name. Sorry, I don't have the model #s on me) were rated for "5-10 uses per day." Seriously?! A model named "School" something, rated for "personal or light office use - 5-10 uses per day?" My wife also has a Boston, which is more worn-out than the other two. I don't know the ages of two of them, but the Staples is nearly new. I do know that none of the three is suitable for someone who will sharpen 10 or more pencils per day, or more than 3 in a row. (They feel warm, through their plastic housings, after about 5.)The Staples rep did tell me that, for ~$60, X-Acto has a model rated for continuous use. You can read the reviews to compare that model to this one. I did, and this one looked superior. Based on initial trials, I would say that this sharpener is as good as it gets. Super quiet, very fast, even-sharpening. It remains to be seen, whether it will handle ~30 pencils daily, but the heavy rating and 10 year warranty, as well as its mass, and the ease with which it sharpens, suggest to me that this one is a winner.Oh, did mention that you can just about see the tip as it's sharpened? And when the pencil is sharp, if you're not pushing hard enough to trip the auto stop, the cutters just stop making contact. So, I presume, one could continue to "touch up" a tip, if they felt it was needed. (I'm almost never pushing that hard, as this thing sharpens so effortlessly.) I'm quite impressed, so far. And if the 10 year warranty is what it claims to be, this is one he**uva sharpener.Edit: I just took off one star, as we've realized that the sharpener only works for pencils down to about 3". Still a great sharpener in every other respect, but one has to use a backup sharpener for shorties.

LOVE this Wescott sharpener! In fact, I bought 2 of these and all of my students ( 3rd/4th combo) spend only a fraction of a second sharpening their pencils now. I may add another one to the classroom soon. Easy to pull out container for cleaning and suction cups stay put. Clean and sharp consistency. Highly recommended if your students do a lot of writing.

I am currently using the iPoint sharpener to freshen my colored pencils which are too delicate to be sharpened with my more powerful double helix sharpener. These include Prismacolor, Pablo, and Marco Raffine pencils. The iPoint sharpens to a nice point on both wax and oil based pencils. It does so without ripping off the outside casing which is an issue with my other (Exacto) sharpener and these brands of pencils. I then went on to sharpen my Polychromos, Bruynzeel, Verithins, Luminance, Derwent Coloursoft, and Tombow Irojiten and had excellent results with all of them.The sharpener will automatically and abruptly stop when the tip is fully sharpened. I expected the sharpener to automatically turn off when the point was reached; however the abrupt stop was really quick and the pencil seemed somehow slightly stuck when I pulled it out. Because of this, I thought that the sharpener had jammed rather than simply hit its auto-stop. It is still a little unnerving but it is the way the sharpener operates.So far, the sharpener seems to hold up well with repeated use. It handled sharpening 72 pencils in a row without issue. However, what concerns me about this sharpener is that almost every part is made of plastic and there is only one sharpening blade, unlike other heavy duty sharpeners that are made mostly of metal and have a dual blade system.If I had a room full of kids each with a handful of pencils, I suspect that a good old fashioned all metal screw on the wall hand sharpener would hold up longer than the mostly plastic iPoint. For my use (sharpening colored pencils as needed), it works very well. If there is a problem in the future, I will certainly come back and update this review.