I’m always on the lookout for inexpensive but high quality notebooks that handle fountain pen inks well, so when I came across this Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook (via Amazon) I was highly curious about its performance. Looks wise it seemed to meet my usual criteria with its minimal branding, double coil binding, and a durable looking cover, so I grabbed one for a review. Lets take a closer look.
The Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook has quite a few nice features that compliment its great design. For example it has a very minimalistic look in terms of the cover and pages when it comes to branding. You wont find the any giant logo or branding anywhere, just a simple plain vinyl cover and pages devoid of branding. The cool thing about the pages though is that they are actually ruled on the front as you can see in the picture above, but they also have grid line ruing on the back. Its always nice to have some options like that between the ruling types.
Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook Writing Sample
There are a lot of things that this Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook does well, and especially at such a reasonable price point. Some of my favorite characteristics about this notebook put it up there with the offerings from Black n’ Red (via Amazon as well) for me, which is saying a lot since they are one of my favorite less expensive brands. Here is a list of the top features on the Blue Sky Notes Professional notebook that I think put it in direct competition with the offerings from Black n’ Red:
- Excellent quality durable vinyl cover
- Sturdy double coil binding
- Micro-perforated pages that rip out clean and easy
- Great writing experience with fountain pen inks with zero feathering, minimal spread, and fairly quick dry time
- Very limited show through on the other side of the page with most inks
There are also a few notable differences between the Black n’ Red notebook and the Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook that are worth pointing out on both the positive and negative side.
On a positive note:
- I love that the front and back of each page has different rulings. Front side is standard ruled markings and the back side (see image above) is a grid layout. Having the option for both is really nice
- I prefer the layout on the regular ruled sides over the Black n’ Red layout, something about the Subject and Date sections at the top as well as the boxed margin on the left really appeals to me
- The vinyl covers on these seem to be a little thicker than those on the Black n’ Red notebooks
On a little bit of a negative note:
- I think the show through for fountain pen inks on these is just a small hair worse than a Black n’ Red notebook but still pretty passable
- As much as I said I like the layout for the ruled pages with the subject, date, and left margins, I don’t like the boxed frame that goes around the entire page that takes up about a quarter of an inch on each of the four sides of the page as it takes away a little bit of writing space
- These don’t have nearly as many options in terms of size and layout like the Black n’ Red notebooks
- Personally I prefer the black cover over grey
Overall though these were a surprisingly nice find and I’d highly recommend giving them a try, check out the Blue Sky Notes Professional Notebook via Amazon for yourself though and enjoy!
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