Kindle Customer 1 The lead is soft and is easy to use but it keeps on breaking. I am using a pencil sharpener dedicated for colored pencils and this is the only colored pencil I'm having a lot of breakage. The color peach is gone by simply sharpening it. My Caran dAche, FaberCastell and Mitsubishi Uni color pencils can be sharpened to a point and they don't break. This is a garbage product. Stay away from it.And yes, its too waxy, I can only blend up to four colors and no more.