Posts filed under Leuchtturm

Leuchtturm1917 Limited Edition Hardcover Pocket Notebook Review

The Leuchtturm1917 limited edition hardcover notebooks are almost exactly like their standard counterparts, but they have just enough extra pizzazz to make it worth the extra couple of bucks. Having been a Leuchtturm fan and customer for many years, I didn't think much about the shiny new colors this year, which mark the company's 100th anniversary, but having one in hand changed my opinion.

If you've never owned a Leuchtturm notebook, you should consider changing that. They're not ground-breaking in any sense, but they just work well and look great at the same time. Want something that looks like a Moleskine but performs well? Leuchtturm is one of the many high-quality options for this category, and the shiny limited edition notebooks take this a step further.

The silver version I have is shiny, smooth, and almost white in direct light. The banding and bookmarks are a matching light gray that work well with the overall color scheme. Color-coordinated banding to match the cover color is nothing new for Leuchtturm, but I'm glad to see that the gray works well with the shiny silver. They even went the extra mile and added silver accents to the included sticker pack for labeling and archiving your notebook. It's small touches like these that make me happy to have one of the limited edition notebooks.

Once you make it to the inside of the notebook, everything is standard. For those who haven't had the pleasure of using a Leuchtturm notebook, the paper is a fantastic acid-free 80gsm with minimal coating, giving it a great feel and fast dry times for most inks. In my testing, you can almost always expect a small amount of show-through on the back of the page with most inks, but it doesn't make the back page unusable. The only ink I normally have trouble with in Leuchtturm paper is the Schmidt P8126 refill — the refill found in the Retro 51 Tornado. Apart from that, mileage will vary depending on the ink and nib combo, but it's reasonably well-behaved with most inks.

The dot-grid pattern on this paper is perfect — a medium gray dot spaced at about 5mm. Of course, all Leuchtturm books have numbered pages, and this one is no exception.

The notebook features two bookmarks — one is a solid light gray, and the other is a striped gray. This makes it easy to keep track of two different sections of your book. The closure band is also strong and secure, keeping your notebook closed securely when not in use.

Being a pocket notebook (A6), it can have trouble staying open and laying flat on its own. Once the spine is broken in a bit, it stays open easier, but it's always going to have trouble given the small size.

The only exterior branding is located on the lower back cover — a small embossed Leuchtturm1917 logo. There's not much branding on the interior — just the standard information page at the beginning of the book followed by a couple of "contents" pages so that you can organize the notebook into paginated sections for easy reference.

One thing to note is that any information, marketing, or literature is repeated in 3 languages: German, English, and French. It can be a bit distracting to see three versions of the same thing, but it's minimal since 99.9% of the notebook is blank. It's really only noticeable on the packaging.

There are 187 pages in the notebook, along with 12 perforated, detachable sheets in the back.

I've always enjoyed Leuchtturm notebooks, and this one is no exception. They've well-made, perform well, and are affordable. A perfect combination and value!

Along with silver, you can also find the limited edition notebooks in gold and copper in dotted, ruled, and plain style. Each notebook is just under $18, which is about $5 more than the regular colors. If you ask me, the extra money is worth the shiny pop of silver, gold, and copper on the cover, and a great way to support the 100 year anniversary of a beloved stationery company.

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

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Posted on January 3, 2018 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Leuchtturm, Notebook Reviews.

Leuchtturm1917 Academy Pad Review

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

The Leuchtturm1917 brand of notebooks has been a favorite of mine for quite a while, so I was excited to receive the new Academy Pad to review. The Academy Pad is unique compared to other notebooks like it — instead of a nicely bound notebook sandwiched between a handsome black cover, the Academy Pad is a 60-sheet pad that is attached to a traditional black notebook cover, complete with an inside pocket and elastic band closure.

The Academy Pad comes in either blank or ruled, but the blank also comes with a grid guide sheet that you can place behind the paper while you write. This helps by providing a grid system behind the page so you can write in a straight line. Sadly, these guides are never a big help for me, but that's a user problem, not the product.

The A5 pad has 60 sheets of the fantastic paper you know and love from Leuchtturm. The only difference here is that the pad is bound by glue on the left side of the pages, which makes it easy to rip out sheets. In fact, that's the intended design of this notebook. Once a page is full, you rip it out and store it in the pocket, give it away, throw it in the bin, or whatever other purpose you have for it. Once I wrapped my head around this concept, it started to click with me.

The paper in this pad is identical to what you'll find in any Leuchtturm notebook, and that was a huge relief for me. It features 100gsm paper, rounded corners, acid-free paper, and bleed-proof paper, among other things. While the paper is bleed-proof, it does allow ink to show through the other side if you're using anything larger than a fine fountain pen nib. The Pilot brush pen I used was the obvious deal-breaker here, but that's not what I call a common use case. At any rate, Leuchtturm doesn't market this book as a sketchbook, so you shouldn't expect a brush pen to play nicely with it. Overall, writing in this pad was identical to writing in other Leuchtturm notebooks, and that's a great thing.

The tearing action is exceptionally smooth on this pad. In some pads, the glue is too strong or the paper is too weak, leading to easily ripped pages. That hasn't been the case in this pad — the binding and paper strength creates a perfect blend. After filling a page, simply pull down from the corner, and the pages slips out with a quiet, satisfying noise. Again, there's a convenient pocket inside the notebook, but it's positioned on the front cover instead of the back in this case. The pocket is easier to get into than the standard notebooks, and it can hold a lot of paper.

The outside cover feels a bit large compared to the pad, but I think that's a design element to protect the pad. I don't like it because it makes the notebook look poorly made (like they didn't properly measure before printing out thousands of covers), but that's not a deal-breaker for me. I do wish that the width was consistent through the entire notebook. Instead, the wide closest to the binding is a couple millimeters taller than the right-hand edge thickness. A minor complaint, but one that I can't but notice every time I look at the notebook.

When it comes down to it, I like the notebook, but it also confuses me. As a pad of paper, it's exceptionally well-made. It offers a great writing experience, high-quality binding, and plenty of utility. I'm confused by the cover because I'm not sure why it's included. It gets in my way, and I don't think it adds anything to the overall notebook. On top of that, I don't see any replacement pads (sans-cover) for sale on JetPens, which strikes me as odd due to the fact that the pad easily slips out of the back cover. I assumed this meant the pad was replaceable, but now I'm second-guessing that assumption. Maybe JetPens will offer replacement pads in the future, because I can only assume that you're meant to throw away the empty cover once you've finished a pad. That seems wasteful, and I'd like to see replacement pads as an option.

Either way, this is a well-made notebook, on par with Leuchtturm's other offerings. It comes in blank and ruled paper, and it sells for a little under $20. If you see this notebook and immediately think of a use case, then grab it! Otherwise, you might want to skip it in favor of a more traditional notebook or naked pad of paper.

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

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Posted on July 19, 2017 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Leuchtturm, Notebook Reviews.

Leuchtturm1917 Pocket A6 Sketchbook 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.)

The build quality of Leuchtturm notebooks is always bound to impress. They're simple, functional, and durable--and with the bright colors, they're also fun. The Pocket A6 Sketchbook has all of the staple necessities of a standard Leuchtturm: a sturdy hardback cover, expandable back pocket, ribbon bookmark, elastic closure, thread binding, acid-free paper, and sticker labels. Because it's a sketchbook and not a journal, the pages are blank and not numbered, and there is no index in the front. Perhaps it's my inner librarian talking, but I'd still love a table of contents, even for sketches.

The paper is white, 180 gsm. It has a good bit of tooth to it and works best with pencil, rollerball ink, and brush pen or marker. I was surprised that there was no feathering with the wet marker I used. Fountain pens feathered a little, but not as much as I expected. I think this notebook would hold up well for pen-and-ink drawings, or could be used as a freeform journal.

I tried a dip pen with a flex nib, and that didn't go well at all. The nib snagged at the page, the ink feathered like a baby chicken, and it bled through the page and onto the next one. The paper stood up to some light watercolor use. There was some mild wrinkling, but not severe. In places where water was used more heavily, however, there was a little bleeding and deterioration of the paper.

The notebook does lay open quite well once the spine has been trained. It's a bit stiff at first, but putting it through a little notebook yoga did wonders. At 96 pages of thick paper, this book has a lot of girth for a small sketchbook. Despite its claim to being a pocket notebook, I don't think it would fit comfortably in a pocket, and it didn't fit in my pocket notebook cases. It is, however, a good size for slipping into a purse or briefcase for on-the-go sketches. It wouldn't take up much space in a daypack or messenger bag. The plentiful pages would be nice for travel, when you need something portable but don't want to run out of pages or carry multiple books.

My nine-year-old, who has claimed this on the grounds that it is his favorite color, intends to use it to write out LEGO instructions for his very complicated and important designs.

I personally prefer my sketchbooks to handle more sloppy media, but I think this book has a lot to offer a pen-and-ink or pencil sketcher with places to be. You just can't beat Leuchtturm's sturdy reliability.

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

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Posted on December 1, 2016 by Sarah Read and filed under Leuchtturm, Notebook Reviews.