Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook Review

A few times a year I pick out a product from JetPens that I think is one thing and ends up as not at all what was in my head. I’m bad at reading descriptions apparently. Most of the time it works out just fine because I am a stationery junkie and like almost everything. Additionally, it forces me to go outside of my comfort zone, which is a great position to be in when it comes to reviews.

The Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook is a kraft cover stock spiral bound notebook, or so I thought. It is also a kraft paper on the inside notebook, which I didn’t consider when selecting based on the title of the product alone. Turns out, this kraft paper is pretty great.

When I think of craft paper my mind immediately jumps to a paper bag. The surface of paper bags aren’t smooth, and if you have ever experimented writing on one you know they are porous and soak up ink. The paper in this Midori is not that at all. It is smoother than you think (although not dead smooth like standard Rhoda paper for example), and the ink performs far better than I anticipated with little to no bleed or feathering.

It was a given in my mind that I would test this paper with the Uni-ball Signo UM-153 white gel ink pen. It is tailor made for an application like this. The 1.0 mm line is thick and looks awesome. And since it was a gel ink pen there is little to no chance it would feather or bleed through the page.

What I wasn’t so convinced of was using liquid inks like found in rollerballs, brush pens, and fountain pens. I thought the brush pens would go right through the page, but they didn’t come close to doing that. Both of the Kuretake brush pens I tested were great, and might be the ideal pen for this notebook. No feathering at all from either. The Schmidt P8126 roller came close to bleeding through the page. I could tell it was getting into the fibers, but the ink never made it through the back.

Fountain pen inks behaved well, with the Califolio Andrinople from a medium stub nib being the only one showing the slightest bit of feathering around the edges. And that only occurred as it dried. When I was writing I didn’t see it at all. The lone negative is that it wasn’t smooth enough for me to use my XXF fountain pen nibs comfortably, but that is an outlier. Otherwise, this kraft paper exceeded every expectation I had for it.

The only thing left for me to determine is how to use the Midori Camel. It feels like purely a sketchbook at this point. I wouldn’t choose it for notes or journaling, but for drawings and sketches it is ideal, especially with easy rotation into landscape mode.

The A5 Slim size in this review contains 80 sheets for $14, and the smaller A6 Slim has the same amount of sheets for $10.75, both from JetPens.com.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Ink samples page

Ink samples page (back)

Maruman Mnemosyne N195 Spiral Notebook Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

The Maruman Mnemosyne N195 Special Memo Notepad, like its other Mnemosyne siblings, is a notebook that easily makes the cut for replacing your standard Moleskine notebook. Sure, it's spiral-bound, but you'll probably be able to forgive that once you try the paper.

I've always enjoyed the N196, which is the same format as this notebook except that the spiral binding is on top. While that's a great format for some purposes, I also enjoy using a side bound notebook as well.

It's easy to compare this notebook to the top-bound brother because they're very similar. The sizes are a bit different, where the side-bound notebook is A5 and the top-bound is B6, and the former has 80 pages instead of 50 like the top-bound book. But, the same paper is used in both, which is the real star.

The N195 is an example of a "perfect notebook" for my use. I love the A5 size pages for most purposes, and it's one of the biggest things I consider when looking for a new general purpose notebook. This one fits the bill nicely with dimensions of 6 x 8.25 inches and 7mm ruling. The ruling spacing hits a sweet spot for me. It's not too small, but it still works well with my small-medium writing style.

Build

The Mnemosyne N195 is built well for being a soft cover spiral-bound book. The wire binding is strong and resilient against bending in loaded bags. The fact that it's a twin spiral also keeps the pages more secure from tearing out, which is helpful with perforated pages. It always irritates me when a page tears out from the binding instead of tearing at the perforation. I've never had that problem with this notebook.

The covers are pliable, but still sturdy. They're the perfect weight for protecting the pages inside a bag, but probably can't defend it from more distressing situations. The cover features the black, minimalistic design as every other Mnemosyne notebook, save for the single gold "Mnemosyne" in the top-right corner of the front cover. Even this branding is small compared to the overall size of the cover. The back cover has a small SKU sticker that is easy to remove. The inside cover has a yellow sheet that features some more branding, including the Mnemosyne tagline, "The ancient Greek goddess of memory," which is a great name for a notebook.

Paper

The paper in the Mnemosyne notebooks is exceptional. It's not extremely thin like Tomoe River paper, but it is supple. Some papers have a certain amount of tooth, while others are made to be smooth like glass. Mnemosyne leans heavily toward the "smooth like glass" side of the scale. It's an absolute pleasure to write on.

It handles all types of pens and inks with ease, and dries fairly quickly. The pages aren't numbered, and each page has a section at the top for Date, number, and title. I don't normally use this section, but it's a nice thing to include.

The lines are spaced at 7mm in a light gray dotted pattern. They're very well done and seem to blend into the background when using vibrant inks. There are 80 sheets in the notebook, and each one is micro-perforated.

Overall

This notebook is one of my all-time favorites in this spiral-bound A5 category. There are a lot of contenders, but this one takes the cake every time. And, it even beats out a lot of glue- or cloth-bound notebooks as well. Sometimes you just want a good spiral notebook, and the Mnemosyne N195 Special Memo Notepad is an excellent choice.

The N195 is just under $10 at JetPens, which is a great value for this exceptional little notebook.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Holtz SenseBook Notebook Review

Small format hard-bound notebooks are in an interesting spot in the market. They have their fans, but are they functional enough to find a home in your pockets when deciding on a portable writing kit? To me, they are not.

The prime reason I rarely use this style is because the hard covers are too stiff in the 3.5” x 5.5” size. The Holtz SenseBook is no exception. It is too big to carry in a pocket, and too small to lay flat with this number of pages in this type of binding. That said, there are some redeeming values here.

The leather cover is a single layer and somewhat pliable, unlike similar products from Moleskine or Rhodia, who wrap leather around cardboard or some other material. This gives is some flex, although you wouldn’t know it from how stiff it feels. But it can bend, and I’ve had not problem bending the cover all the way around the back and return to its original shape.

Transotype did a nice job with paper performance-wise. It is marketed as wood-free paper, which confused me enough to have to look it up. The manufacturing process removes the wood components and the remaining materials are used. Wood free paper also doesn’t yellow as much, but with the cream color used here you won’t see it as readily regardless.

In use, it reminds me a lot of Leuchtturm1917 paper. It handles most inks well, with only the widest nib fountain pens bleeding through to the back of the page, but only barely and not to the page behind it.

The extras in the SenseBook are six index pages in the front, 16 perforated pages in the back, with numbered pages throughout and a rear storage pocket. The light brown leather is set off nicely by the red ribbon bookmark and red elastic closure band. I could do without the double tag label hanging off the cover though.

That is the SenseBook in a nutshell. Beautiful, not functional. It’s not a bad notebook by any stretch. It won the highly prestigious RedDot Design Award in 2013 and the German Design Award in 2015. Congratulations - great job! When it wins its first functionality award I might be more interested.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)