The Staedtler Battery Operated Eraser

Sometimes when I see something in the office supplies section of a website or store, I can’t really think of a real “office” setting where it would be used, and thats the case for this Staedtler Battery Operated Eraser that I came across and couldn’t resist buying to try out.  This is probably more suited for an artist or possibly an engineer or avid cross-word puzzler, but lets take a look at it anyway.

Holding on to the Staedtler Battery Operated Eraser

This battery operated eraser is fairly light weight and fits comfortably and easily into your hand.  As you can see from the package above, it comes with 11 extra “latex free” erasers in addition to the one pre-loaded one.  You can also pick up a pack of 30 Staedtler replacement erasers once you burn through the set originally provided.  On the side, right next to the tip of the index finger pictured above, there is a button that activates the eraser.  The tip of the eraser rotates in a smooth circular motion, but only while you press on the button, as it does not lock in a permanent ‘on’ position.  The two (not included) AAA batteries are also small enough to keep this light weight and comfortable to use.

Staedtler Battery Operated Eraser Components

Replacing the eraser is fairly simple, you just grab the edge of the metal clamp that is already sticking out from the end of the eraser body and pull, it slides out very easily.  Once you have it out, you can either adjust the current eraser to make it longer or shorter, or completely replace it with a new one if it is now too short.

Staedtler Eraser Lengths

One thing that I found a little funny was the lack of quality control in the length of the extra erasers provided.  The dotted line in the photo above represents the shortest eraser, and the solid black lines to the right represent the ends of each individual eraser.  Now I’m not going to complain over what s probably about 1/2″ of total eraser length, but I just find it a bit odd that a company would be so inconsistent with this.  For me, the consumer buying a few of these occasionally, its only a few pennies, but for someone mass-producing a product like this, I’d think that the cost of some longer erasers could end up impacting the overall financial success of the product.  Anyway, on to the actual product performance, which I was quite impressed with.

Video of the Battery Operated Eraser in Action

The video above shows the battery operated eraser in action, very easily erasing what I made sure was a heavy and solid patch of .3mm B lead.  The eraser wipes the entire swatch of lead clean in a matter of seconds, with significantly less effort than if I had used a regular eraser.

Eraser Sample from Video

The next photo is a close up of the dark patch of lead that was erased in the preceding video.  There is also a sample that shows the eraser cutting through a box of progressively darkening lead so you can click on that to get a better view of exactly how well the eraser removed the lead.

For the most part I think this Staedtler battery operated eraser does an excellent job of quickly and easily erasing lead without ruining paper.  I do however think its probably a bit of overkill for most people.  As I said in the introduction, this is probably best for artists, crossword puzzlers, and maybe architects or engineers.  I guess it would be good for standardized test takers too, but I’m not up on all the rules of what is allowed for certain tests, so you may not be able to take this in with you.  Oh, and one last thing…because sometimes I’m more like a 4 year old child rather than a grown adult, I found it pretty funny that when you leave too much of the eraser hanging out, this is what happens:

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.