Art Track 160 Colored Pencils Review: A Budget Set That Falls Short

Introduction

Budget colored pencil sets from online marketplaces can be hit or miss. Some turn out surprisingly capable, and a few become genuine hidden gems. The Art Track 160 colored pencils set sits firmly in the other category. It looks appealing at first glance, the packaging suggests a serious art product, and the price is low enough to tempt almost anyone. Unfortunately, after extended testing on multiple papers, this set proved to be one of the most frustrating to actually use.

Who This Set Is For

Honestly, almost no one. The packaging claims these pencils are for “kids, students, and artists,” but that claim does not hold up for any of those groups. Beginners will be discouraged by how hard it is to get pigment onto paper, students will struggle to build values, and artists will find the color range unusable for finished work. If you have roughly the same budget, a smaller set from a more reputable brand will serve you far better.

Packaging and First Impressions

The set arrives in a white cardboard box that slides open to reveal the pencils presented top down in a plinth insert. That presentation is genuinely distinctive and was part of the initial appeal. The box also includes something many budget manufacturers omit: a company name, an address, and a service hotline for the manufacturer. That detail initially seemed like a good sign.

The printed claims on the packaging, however, raise red flags. The box states “high quality acid-free pigments,” “unsurpassed lightfastness,” and “soft vibrant color lay down.” There is no published lightfastness data anywhere, and in practice these pencils show no meaningful lightfastness at all. The listed 3mm core also measures closer to 2.8 to 2.9mm in hand. Even the swatch card printed on the insert has color numbers that do not consistently match the numbers stamped on the pencils themselves.

Build Quality and Pencil Design

The barrels are hexagonal, roughly 6.9mm across, and noticeably lightweight, which immediately signals a budget build. Barrel printing is minimal and a little rough: “colored pencils,” a simple circle-and-dot logo, the Art Track name, and a color number on the reverse.

To create a proper swatch chart on Bristol vellum paper, the cores required real pressure. The core is hard, and a light layer produces almost no coverage. Because the pencil does not adhere well to itself, stacking multiple layers is difficult, so heavy pressure becomes the only way to pull color out of the barrel. The swatch looks bright and vibrant on paper, but the effort behind it tells a different story.

Testing on Paper: Swatches and Artwork

To give the set a fair chance, testing moved from Bristol vellum to mixed media paper, hoping the extra tooth would drag out more vibrancy and allow better blending. The subject was a simple still life of three peppers: red, green, and orange.

Halfway through the first red pepper, the experience had already become unpleasant. Darker tones simply do not build. Even laying black down first and layering red on top, then blending with odorless mineral spirits, produced only marginal improvement. Five or six different red tones were used on one pepper, yet the finished result barely shows the variation. Greens were worse, and shadow and highlight contrast proved very difficult to achieve.

Sanded paper fared no better: the coarse surface simply ground down the cores without releasing usable pigment. On smoother papers the pencils had too little pigment to offer anything at all. Multiple papers, multiple techniques, and solvent blending were all tried, and the set resisted all of them.

Sharpening and Core Breakage

Sharpening introduced a final frustration. Several pencils, particularly in the green range, started shedding their cores during sharpening, with the pigment center falling out of the barrel. Combined with the low pigment load, coarse papers eat through the core rather than transferring color, which shortens the usable life of the pencils considerably.

Buying Advice

At the time of purchase, this set cost around £20 for 160 pencils, and it may be even less now. That price is exactly why this review exists. A large set for under £30 looks like a great deal, but this is a case where spending the same amount on a smaller, better-reviewed set, or adding £10 to £20 more for a quality brand, will result in pencils you will actually enjoy using. This set cannot layer well, cannot produce convincing dark values, and makes the process of drawing genuinely joyless.

Conclusion

The Art Track 160 colored pencils set has attractive packaging, a unique presentation, and a price that looks like a bargain. In practice, the hard cores, low pigment load, mismatched color numbering, core breakage, and absent lightfastness make it a set to avoid, whether on Amazon, AliExpress, or elsewhere. Look for a smaller set from a brand with proven reviews instead, and your budget will go much further.