There were a couple little gems though including the Pen + Gear Gaming Journal ($7.50) that looks like a vintage gameboy.  The cover is made from translucent yellow plastic with die cuts that highlight the silver foil on the soft cover.

Inside are three colored paper sections with 40 sheets each in aqua blue, lemon yellow and fluorescent orange. Each section features a different phrase in the lower corner: Keep Calm, Game On and Level Up.

Each page is also perforated for easy removal.

I did my initial writing sample with a Platinum Carbon Pen and to my great surprise, the paper seemed to take the ink well.

In further writing samples, I tried a variety of pens that I might use with a notebook like this: gel, pencils, markers and felt tips as well as fountain pens all with similar results.

To my surprise, when I flipped the page over, their was very little showthrough or bleed through. There was a bit of bleed through with the Pentel Dual Metallic gel pens but they are quite a specialty pen.

I did a close-up image to see the few little dots from fountain pen tests.

Overall, this notebook is actually pretty good and ridiculously fun. I hope that I can find another notebook that will fit into the yellow cover so that I can re-use it after the colored paper journal is filled.

I was delighted to find a little treasure in the back-to-school section.

Bonus Review: Mead Five Star College Ruled Composition Notebook

I also picked up a Mead Five Star Composition Notebook ($2.50). It’s college-ruled with a plastic flexible cover. I have always loved the size and form-factor of a composition notebook but, unfortunately, since these notebooks are exclusively targeted to school age kids, the driving factor is often price over quality.

When I saw the pretty marble-look cover in pastel colors with metallic gold paint flecks, I had high hopes that the quality of the notebook would be above average.

The notebook includes 100 pages and QR-style codes in each corner that will allow pages to be scanned with the Five Star App. Notes can then be synced to Google Drive to access them anywhere from any device.

With standard writing tests, none of the pens bled or feathered but the show-through and bleed-through was ridiculous.

From the reverse, the paper looks so see-through as to be tissue rather than actual paper stock.

I’m very disappointed in the paper quality. Why do we do this to children? Why do we give them sub-par materials and expect to succeed?

Sadly, I find this notebook is seriously unacceptable. Mead, “High quality paper”? My ass. Give this composition notebook a hard pass.

DISCLAIMER:  Some items in this post were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Notebook Review: Pen + Gear Gameboy Notebook appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

I chose the brown notebook for this review. The paper is a light tan color and I’ve found it can look quite different based on lighting and surroundings.

The notebook is made of 14 pieces of paper folded to make a single signature of 28 sheets or 56 pages (if you number front and back, the final number will be 56). It is held together with brass colored staples inside a thick cardstock cover.

I chose the brown notebook for this review since it is the least cheerful of the lineup – my reasoning was, if I love the brown notebook, I’ll have no problem loving the other colors!

I love these bright colors! They are perfect right now in the spring – cheerful, happy, lovely color.

The pages are a pastel version of the cover page in each notebook. Above, from top to bottom – turquoise, lavender, green, brown, pink, yellow. Showing the pages next to each other like this is really the best way to give a good idea of the paper color – without a point of reference, they can be tough to photograph.

So, on with the brown notebook. It will stay open on its own if given a bit of encouragement. The paper itself is thick – I would estimate 80-100 gsm although I can’t find a specific weight. The notebooks are made by Midori but this is not MD paper.

The paper is just a tad on the toothy side of average – pencil glides over the page without slipping. I’ve added stamps to my paper tests lately since I’ve noticed that several popular papers are terrible with stamp ink including Tomoe River, onion skin, cotton, and MD. The paper in the Color Paper notebook is good at taking stamp ink but not wonderful. There was plenty of show-through but no ink bled through the page.

On the reverse side, you can see some ghosting (the photo picks up more ghosting than I saw in person) but Sharpie is the only item that actually came through the page. Even Sharpie did not bleed through onto the next page, though. I was terribly impressed with the success of the graphic pens and the brush pen!

I used the first page of the notebook for my testing. The notebook stayed open to this first page with only a little encouragement, and I found that it is a great one to use with the pages folded back on themselves if needed for one-handed use.

I’m glad I purchased the whole set of these notebooks – they are perfect for an A5 Traveler’s-style cover or an A5 Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter cover and at $3.50 each, they are well worth the cost. Plus, the color! Love the color.

Susuwatari also love color.

• Paper:  Midori Color Paper Notebook, A5 ($3.50 for 56 pages)

DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us at a discount for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

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