Princeton Architectural Press Pocket Dept. Back Pocket Notebook Review

[heath]

For all the pics with the full review click here: http://penpaperinkletter.com/princet...tebook-review/

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This is the Princeton Architectural Press Pocket Dept. Back Pocket 4″ x 4″ Blank Notebook. It is a square yellow notebook made to fit into your shirt or pants pocket. It has 64 pages, 32 sheets of 120 g blank slightly off-white paper. It is thread and glue bound in a block end style. In just looking and feeling these tiny books you get a sense of quality. The one I reviewed had a few cosmetic flaws but otherwise I think these are really well made.

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My only, albeit somewhat major, issue with these books is that even at 120g paper they just aren’t fountain pen friendly. The pages are thick enough for the most part but the quality attributes that fountain pen people are looking for just aren’t there. I had heavy feathering even at the extra-fine level and even with mild inks. For some that is enough to skip this book entirely but for me, at this size, I think it’s not near as big a flaw as it would have been on a larger notebook. At 4″ x 4″ this is a memo pad for quick thoughts and mobile scribbles. In that realm I think most people can cope with the paper quality.

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With the pages being slightly off-white the colors don’t have quite as much pop but bold and bright inks still look great. I tried this notebook with many pens and It has handled well. With the pressure used to write with most ball pens I had about one page worth of indention past the page I was writing on.

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The square shape is very pleasing aesthetically and does indeed fit in all the pocket I tried. It fits in my front and back pants pockets and my shirt pockets. The squared off binding though does make back pocket carry a bit uncomfortable. Even though this is called a pocket notebook, the place it really works well for me is my office desk. I often times am scribbling notes throughout the day on whatever small scraps I have but then they get scattered and anyone walking by your desk can read them. This book is just about the size of a post-it but it keeps all the notes together and concealed. You can then throw it in your shirt pocket when you go to lunch and review them or take it home for cataloging.

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To sum up, I really like this notebook at this size. It is well made and the blank pages give optimum flexibility to a page that is already limited by size so as not to limit further. I could easily see these replacing my stack of post it notes on my desk as well.

-Heath
@WeThePPIL