Saturday, May 21, 2016

Black and Red Review

A friend of mine, who is also into fountain pens, gave me a notebook to try out for the purpose of a review. It is this Black and Red notebook.



The notebook is a hardbound book containing paper that is 90GSM (Grams per Square Meter) which is the equivalent of Clairefontaine paper. It feels amazingly smooth, much like Clairefontaine and Rhodia paper is.

I do enjoy the color scheme and the tie in to the branding name. All of it is black and red with the exception of the paper, obviously. The bookmark is even a red ribbon. I am loving the thought here that went into this cohesive branding attempt, which is successful.

The spine is case bound, not cloth bound but it is bound in such a way as to stay flat on the surface for note taking. 



The inside of the book is somewhat similar to notebooks like Leuchtturm where there is an index place, planner etc on the inside endpapers.


Now let's get to the paper. I remember asking my friend how it held up to fountain pen ink and he said beautifully. I put it to the test with 21 pens with varying nib widths and 21 inks from different manufacturers. I am impressed.




No feathering, no spread and no bleedthrough. Only a touch of echo on the scrubbies.


Overall, I really like this notebook and they are quite affordable. I found them on Amazon for under $10 a piece which is dramatically cheaper than its well known competitors. For those of you who bullet journal, this is a fine alternative to the Leuchtturm books. Thanks Chris for the notebook to review and I will be using one of these from now on.

This review reflects my opinion based off of my experience. I was not compensated by Black and Red nor do I represent them in any way.

5 comments:

  1. I have looked at this notebook before and thought about buying. Thanks for the review.

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  2. You are welcome. It is a fairly inexpensive alternative.

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  3. You are welcome. It is a fairly inexpensive alternative.

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  4. Just wanted to show my appreciation for this review. I was looking for fountain pen friendly notebooks to break into this school semester (and all future ones), and seeing this gave me confidence in ordering a few. Thanks! I am doing Physics homework in one of them as I type this! (Well, more accurately, I'm procrastinating from Physics homework as I type this...)

    -marilyn

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    1. Wonderful. I appreciate the feedback and learning that it helped out. Keep on writing!

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