Pentel

Pentel is one of those brands genuinly hiding a lovely bit of history behind an ordinary-looking name. The company was founded in Tokyo in 1946 by Yukio Horie, originally under the name Japan Stationery Company, with a genuine early mission to develop crayons and pastels that helped people express themselves creatively. The name "Pentel" itself started life as the name of one specific product — an early oil pastel line, combining "pen" from painting and "tel" from pastel — and it wasn't until 1971 that the company adopted it as their official company name, once the products carrying it had become genuinly successful enough to define the whole business.

What Pentel is actually best known for globally, though, is a genuine invention rather than a product line. In 1963, Pentel developed what became known as the Sign Pen — widely credited as the world's first modern felt-tip pen. It's genuinly hard to overstate how significant that was at the time; before it, artists and writers were working with fountain pens, ballpoints or brushes, and nothing offered that particular combination of bold, consistent line and effortless glide. The Sign Pen made Pentel a genuinly global name almost overnight, and the company followed it with a steady run of real innovations through the 1960s and 70s — the first 0.9mm mechanical pencil, the first ink roller pen under the Ball Pentel name, and continued advances in art materials alongside their writing instruments.

That art materials side of the business is genuinly still going strong today, and it's the part I know best from my own years in the industry. Pentel's oil pastels specifically have earned a proper, honest reputation as a reliable budget option — I've actually written about them directly on this site, since my own kids have used Pentel oil pastels for school projects at our kitchen table, and they cope with enthusiastic, heavy-handed use far better than you'd expect at the price. That's genuinly the Pentel story in miniature: not the flashiest option in any given category, but reliably, honestly capable, generation after generation.

Beyond oil pastels, Pentel's range genuinly spans a huge amount of ground — mechanical pencils, fineliners, brush pens, highlighters, gel pens and markers all sit alongside their art materials, which makes them one of those brands you end up buying from without necessarily thinking of as one single brand, the way Winsor & Newton feels distinctly "art" or Rotring feels distinctly "technical." Pentel is genuinly everywhere, quietly, because the products just work.

Given how widely Pentel is stocked across the UK — school suppliers, general stationers, dedicated art shops, and everything in between — checking prices individually across retailers is genuinly more hassle than it needs to be, which is exactly why our comparison tool exists. Rather than checking each stockist separately, we pull current prices together in one place so you can see the best available deal at a glance. Pentel doesn't always run huge, dramatic sales, but genuine discounts and multi-buy deals do come up regularly, particularly around back-to-school season, so it's worth checking back rather than assuming the first price you see is the best one available.

A few honest questions worth answering directly. Is Pentel actually a premium brand, or a budget one? Genuinly, it sits in the middle and does that well — not positioned as a luxury art materials brand, but genuinly more capable than many true budget alternatives, which is exactly why it's such a common recommendation for students, schools and anyone starting out. Are Pentel's art materials as good as their pens? The two sides of the business share the same underlying philosophy of reliable, well-engineered products at a fair price, so yes, genuinly — even if the pens are what made the company globally famous. Where should you buy from? Check our price comparison above for the full current range and the best available deals across UK retailers before you buy.