The Moleskine Volant with a Uniball Signo 207 for size comparison.

I stopped at Borders today because I was on my way to BestBuy to pick up a new tripod for the camera, and the Borders bookstore is right next to it…I remembered that they carry some notebooks and sometimes have some decent sales, so I decided to stop in.  Now the Moleskine Volant Mini (link to Amazon) notebook in my review today wasn’t on sale, and I really had no intent of ever buying another Moleskine notebook, but this one caught me by surprise because of its size.  I’ve had some bad experiences with other Moleskine notebooks due to lots of feathering and bleeding when I wrote in them, so I was hesitant to purchase these, but then I remembered that I did want a small notepad to keep in my car just in case, and I then remembered that the pen I keep in my car is my Uniball Power Tank, which is a ball point pen.  I figured that if I was just going to use these moleskine notebooks with a ball point pen, then I shouldn’t have to worry about any bleeding or feathering issues when I wrote in them.  So now that I had my excuse to spend more money on office supply related stuff, I  made my purchase, for $5.95 plus tax I got two of these 2 1/2″ x 4″ notebooks with 56 perforated pages of acid free paper in each.

Moleskine Volant Mini writing sample with a few different pens that I thought would cause issues.

I was anxious to get these Moleskine notebooks home so I could test some pens on them to see if I was going to regret my purchase in terms of having ink that feathers and/or bleeds like crazy.  As you can see from the picture, I tried a Uniball Jetstream, a Uniball Power Tank, a Uniball Signo 207, Noodler’s Blue Black fountain pen ink, a Pentel Slicci, a Uniball Signo DX, a Sharpie Retractable Ultra Fine, and a Pilot Razor Point in this Moleskine notebook.  To my huge shock and surprise, none of these pens really showed signs of feathering, and even the Sharpie which I expected to feather the most on this paper held up really well.  I’m not sure if I have now just had one really bad Moleskine experience in the past, and this new notebook is the true standard for their paper, or if its the other way around.  All I know for sure is that these Moleskine Volant Mini notebooks have given me pause when it comes to completely abandoning Moleskine notebooks as a whole.  I also really like the perforated paper in these Moleskines so you can just scribble down a quick note or two and take it with you easily, again…I just find these to be very practical little notebooks.

Moleskine Volant Mini notebook in Woody's hand.

You can probably tell from the Woody picture and the first picture with the Uniball Signo 207 that these Moleskine Volants are really compact.  These Moleskine Volant Mini notebooks really are a perfect size to slip into the front pocket of a mens dress shirt, or the inside pocket of a jacket without even noticing they are there.  In my case one of these will always be stashed in my car, and the other will likely be put inside of a shirt or jacket pocket .  I think these would be good (and Im sure the folks into this stuff already know about them) for a topic that I recently learned a little about on the EDC or Every Day Carry forum. I stumbled across that site, and the whole concept because they had linked to one of my pen reviews, its a really interesting concept, and very practical too.   Ill probably do some more reading to see what other great ideas they have over there, and its certainly an interesting and somewhat related topic to check out.  For now though, I’m thrilled with these Moleskine Volant notebooks because they are such awesome pocket size notebooks.

Update: 9/7/09 – I did a quick update post to supplement this review, so check out the Lined version of the Moleskine Volant Mini with some other uses and warnings too.

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