Posts filed under Notebook Reviews

Sunny Light A6 Slim Notebook Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Bluesky. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

Gosh, but I love a good purse notebook. Can you ever have too many? No, you cannot, and this one is a total winner. A purse notebook, for me, is something more robust than a pocket notebook, but still wee and portable. They're perfect for commonplace books, travel journals, meeting notes, or any purpose on-the-go.

The Sunny Light Notebook is really two pieces: The PVC cover and the notebook insert. The PVC cover is smooth and minimal, with just a small logo debossed at the bottom front. It has a built-in faux leather strip bookmark, a pen loop, and an elastic band to help keep the book closed. The cover is shaped to make all of these pieces fit together in a neat package, with space carved out to make room for the pen. Inside, the cover has folder pockets for the notebook insert to slide into. This cover is in a pale green color, and it's also available in yellow, white, blue, pink, and brown. It comes with a small sheet of label stickers.

The cover is perfect for a portable notebook. The PVC is waterproof and durable, so it can survive the inside of even the most chaotic tote bag. The pen loop is on the narrow side, but it can fit a skinny gel pen, or function as a clip loop for any clip pen.

The notebook insert is particularly nice. It's a fairly slim book, but it holds a whopping 160 pages (80 sheets) of Tomoe River S paper. Six of those pages are devoted to a numbered index, and the rest of the pages are numbered and have 2.5 mm grid layout. Not everyone will want to write on both sides of the page, though. While the paper is magically bleed-resistant, there is a bit of ghosting with these thin sheets. It's not enough to bother me, personally, but if you prefer broad nibs and dark inks, it might be an issue for you. It's still a decent number of pages, even if you only use one side.

Sunny Light A6 Slim Notebook Writing Back

The notebook (cover and insert) costs $24, with refills costing $8.25. I think both of those prices are fair. It's also worth noting that while the overall notebook is A6 Slim, the insert is extremely similar in size to Field Notes (off by only a tenth of an inch), and the cover is compatible with them. If you happen to have a stack of Field Notes hanging around (don't we all?), this cover would be a snazzy way to transport them.

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

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Posted on February 13, 2025 by Sarah Read and filed under Sunny Light, Notebook Reviews.

Maruman Utöka Pocket Notebook Review

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

My philosophy when it comes to notebooks is that there's always room for one more. This philosophy is in direct conflict the lack of adequate storage for the notebooks or enough time to fill them all. But, for better or worse, the philosophy of never turning down a new notebook always wins.

The Maruman Utöka Pocket notebook is the latest notebook to find a home in my collection. This is a small spiral-bound notebook with 80 sheets of 4mm graph paper, and 10 sheets of lined "list" paper at the back. All 90 sheets are perforated, making them easy and clean to tear out. And, these sheets are made of 70gsm paper that works really well with all types of writing instruments. Fun fact about the name: Utöka means "expand" or "extend" in Swedish.

Despite this notebook looking like a top-bound steno-style book, it's laid out to be used with the binding on the side. In practice, it's like using a standard A5 notebook that's been sliced in half. I actually like having the extra horizontal space instead of the typical vertical space you get with most notebook orientations.

Since "pocket" is part of the name for this notebook, you might assume that it can fit in something like, say, a pocket, but you'd be wrong! It is a small notebook, but there aren't many pockets that will hold it. At a total size of 107 x 163mm (4.2 x 6.4 inches), it's very portable, but not pocketable. For most people, a pocket notebook is something around 3.5 x 5.5 inches. It's just barely too big to work well with pockets.

The usable sheet dimensions are close the A6 size (105 x 148mm) at 107 x 142mm, meaning there's plenty of space to let your ideas and sketches breathe. The 4mm grid also provides lots of structure while also disappearing if you want to freeform.

Maruman paper is always a delight to use, but most of my experience with their paper is in their Mnemosyne line. With the Utöka notebook, they use a little lighter paper, but it still performs well. It's done great with all the pens and inks I've thrown at it. There's a small amount of show-through when using some inks, but it's not enough to make the back of the page unusable. There's no feathering or bleeding or other weird ink behaviors to speak of. It's a consistent paper that works really well.

The covers of this notebook are a sturdy cardstock material with a glossy coating on the exterior faces. The covers should stand up to minor wear and tear, but I'd expect to see plenty of bends and deterioration with lots of use. Likewise, the double-wire binding is really sturdy, and I love that they've colored the wire a nice gray to complement the color of the cover.

At $7.75, the Maruman Utöka Pocket notebook is a good value. It's perfect for jotting down notes, sketching out ideas, and throwing into a bag to carry along. While it's not a true pocket notebook, it's still very portable and up to the challenge of being a notebook you carry frequently. Plus, if the yellow isn't quite your thing, there are four other accent colors available! You can pick from yellow, red, navy, light green, and light blue.

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

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Posted on January 15, 2025 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Maruman, Notebook Reviews.

Papier Platz x Eric Small Things Notebook Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

Can you ever have too many pocket notebooks? No, of course you can't. That was a trick question. I will always be excited by a pocket notebook, and this one is extra adorable.

The Papier Platz collaboration with Eric Small Things brings us this wee treasure. The highlight is the vinyl cover, which is a cheery shade of orange and decorated with images of pleasant things. There are other colors available: a bright blue, a navy blue, and a grey--each with unique illustrations on the cover. The cover itself is a standard sleeve-style book jacket, where the cardstock covers of the notebook insert slide into a folder pocket on each side. The vinyl adds that pop of decoration while protecting the notebook insert from the danger of everyday carry.

The notebook inside the cover, which comes with it, is a very decent pocket notebook. It's thicker than most, with 192 pages (96 sheets) of 4mm graph paper inside. It also has a built-in ribbon bookmark for keeping your place. It's well constructed, with a sturdy binding that should survive being carried around for the length of time it will take to get through all those pages.

There are some downsides to the notebook, though. First, you can't buy replacement inserts for the vinyl cover, so while the cover is removable, it isn't refillable. It's also not quite a standard size, so you can't substitute a refill from another brand. And that also leads to the second piece of bad news, which is that the paper isn't very fountain pen friendly. It does say that it is, but my experience with it involved some bleed-through.

I still think this is a good notebook--it's great for work, where I'm often not using fountain pens anyway, or for making quick notes when I'm out and about. The notebook costs $10.25 on JetPens, which is fair for the sturdy cover and generous serving of pages.

Papier Platz also have a wide variety of accessories like washi tapes, sticky notes, and stickers that go well with this notebook, if it needs friends. A lot of it is very cute, and much of it celebrates the joy of stationery, which we can all relate to.

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

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!