(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)
Paperian is a new-to-me stationery brand that has a collection of handy notepads that will be at home on any desk along with other stationery or tech paraphernalia. Paperian is a Korean company based in Seoul that have a lot of compelling products on display. Today, we'll take a look at the A5 checklist notepad.
The Paperian Flat Checklist Notepad is an A5 notepad with a pliable glued binding that makes it easy to tear out sheets when you're done for the week. There are 60 sheets in the pad, so you should get more than a year of use out of one pad if you use one sheet per week. The paper is a little on the thick side at 100 gsm, but it has a nice, smooth texture that is easy to write on. The color of the paper is an off-white color that I'd say is a bit more white than the typical ivory paper. I like the color of the paper, and it doesn't negatively affect the ink colors.
There are a few sheet style and size options, but the one I have is called Checklist, and it features a 7-day calendar along the top, a checklist area on the left, and a larger dot-grid notes area with taking up the rest of the space. The top of the page has a space to write in the date or duration of the week. There's a lot of space, so go nuts! Aside from the Checklist style, you can also get Graph, which is 2/3 graph paper on the left, and lined paper on the right third. The bottom right has the only branding, which is a Flat logo and a positive slogan: "Organize all of your thoughts, ideas, and plans that come to mind." It's really small and doesn't detract from any of the usable space on the page.
Before we jump into the page format, let's see how this paper performs with different types of pens and ink! For something that I'd likely keep on my desk all the time to jot down notes or plan out my week, I want something that can effortlessly deal with all types of pens and ink since I tend to have all sorts of writing instruments around. The 100 gsm paper feels nice. It's smooth and has a small amount of texture that provides a nice amount of feedback when writing. The paper doesn't seem to have any coating on it, so ink dries quickly. With a couple of fountain pens I tried, the ink quickly bled and feathered a bit, making the lines look a lot wider than they do on other paper. This wasn't the case with all of the fountain pens, so it's likely down to the combination of the ink and paper. Ballpoints, hybrid ballpoints, gel, rollerball, felt-tip, graphite, and wood-case pencils all work beautifully with this paper.
The format is where this notepad starts to lose me. Everything is so small! I can write small when I need to, but it's not my default and not something I'm looking for in a desk notepad. The blocks set aside for the days of the week are too small to be useful for me. I'm not able to write down more than one useful piece of info per day without running out of space. The tasks section is also a bit small, requiring small writing. The checkboxes are also comically small. The dot-grid notes area is less of a problem due to the open nature of a grid layout.
For my own use, I'd only use very fine pens with this notepad so I could write small and take advantage of the layout. Gel pens 0.5 mm and smaller, ballpoints 0.7 mm and smaller, and mechanical pencils with 0.5 mm lead or smaller is the sweet spot for this notepad. I think my favorite pens to use with this pad are 0.38 mm gel pens and 0.5 mm hybrid ballpoints (like the Jetstream or Acroball). Anything larger makes this pad less useful.
If you like writing small and using ultra-fine pens, this might be a good format for your weekly planning and notes. For everyone else, I'd suggest the A5 Graph option instead.
The Paperian Flat A5 Checklist notepad is $10.50, but you can also pick it up with a graph layout or a full-month calendar layout. And, they have several smaller options too. This notepad is well-made and aesthetically pleasing, but it just doesn't scratch the itch for me. I love that they've laid it out as a horizontal A5 pad and that the sheets tear out easily and cleanly. While this notepad isn't something I'll reach for, I look forward to seeing other products from Paperian!
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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