hi i'm elliot welcome to a show about notebooks specifically the midori md
a5 grid notebook i'm very excited for this one this is very exciting for me i've been using a lot
of these hardcover ones for the past couple years and i've been looking for something different
so let's let's jump right into it i want to first say that it's it's very japanese
it even comes with this like thin feels like rice paper i'm not really sure if i should keep it
or remove it before i start using it long term but i like that it's wrapped in that i kind of
like the feel of it not being hardcover you know sometimes like hardcover is obviously very nice it
protects the paper but it's just nice to hold the paper itself and not have to worry about
you know kind of how thick it is sold separately you can buy a reusable hard cover and you kind of
just slip this on that's if you really like this and you're committing to midori long
term which contemplating it right now it's pretty nice so this notebook contains less paper
than some of these other ones over here so like for example this leuchtturm one has
how many pages is it 251 pages this midori one only has 176.
that's a lot fewer pages however the kind of the squares they use is actually it feels smaller
so it might actually force you to write smaller therefore you might end up with the same
word count depending on how you use it it opens very nice it is thread stitch and reinforced for
the cheese cloth so that just makes opening it flat so much easier than a hardcover one
which is a big plus for me so the paper is cream colored and it's famous for being bleed resistant
feather resistant and just really good with fountain pens that is something we're gonna find
out about a little later so stay tuned for that in terms of additional features it does come with
this little little adorable little ribbon so cute it's everything about this notebook is very cute
thank you thank you japan um so yeah so very thin i can't even i i can't even deal with it it
doesn't have any page numbers and it also doesn't have that retractable pocket at the end that you
usually get with um hardcover notebooks so nothing like that however it does come with this uh
little sticker here oh this is nice i like it you know it's not hard cover but this cover
it should be able to do it unless you're planning on throwing your
your you know notebook around and just drop kicking it down the street
i think it should be okay this notebook is all about trying new things for me
so it's very exciting yeah i don't know i feel like i should take off this marketing material
i don't know i'm loving this notebook it's so clean and sleek and just something so different
it really does make me feel like i'm about to go take a class in japan or something
these little boxes remind me a lot of having to take chinese lessons when i was a kid and
really just trauma so right now on amazon this notebook costs about 19 and 80 cents
which is actually a little cheaper than some of these ones over here the livestream the moleskin
they are a little bit more expensive i believe like maybe five to seven dollars more expensive
which is if you're buying a notebook that is quite a bit just in terms of the price
i would say it's just a little above mid-range and definitely one you should consider if you're
contemplating getting a moleskin or a livestream i do think this is a good one but let's put it
through the ultimate test the pen test ignore all the marketing material because this is
what matters the most how it actually handles ink and all that stuff so i got here with me a bunch
of different writing utensils and i'm gonna try each one and see which one is actually the best
choice for this notebook or maybe none of them are and maybe we should just give up right here
and give up on this notebook completely but before that let's actually try it out so the first one i
have here is one of my favorite pens i use this pretty much every day this is the pentel energel
metal ballpoint pen the second one is the parker fountain pen with blue ink this notebook claims
to be good at handling fountain pens i claim to be very bad at handling fountain pens so
combine that together we will chalk it up as me being not great at it i am a smudgy guy i
smudge and if you're expecting this notebook to just quickly dry your ink it won't because
a case of point i smudged it the third one is the paper mate erasable gel pen this one
is not my favorite but it honestly felt pretty good on this paper as well the next one is the bic
ultra round stick grip ballpoint pen with blue ink
next is the deli gel pen this pen is great if you're trying to write really fine lines
um that's if you want to like conserve space or anything like that this is a good pen to
choose finally the staedtler pencil i rarely use pencils to write in this notebook but if you do
here's how it looks so how did it all turn out aside from the little mess with the fountain pen
uh i think it performed great in fact my favorite pen here the pentel energel when i used it on this
paper it felt probably i'm not exaggerating here but one of the best i've ever seen it
perform is on with this paper so planning on using this fountain pen a little bit more but
i really do like this pen an important thing to mention is that there's hardly any ghosting at
all from any of these pens and i write pretty hard the paper performed greatly just if you're using
a found pen please give it a moment to allow it to dry maybe right a little bit slower i
mean if you're looking for something a little bit different a different experience for like
a few weeks few months however long it takes you to fill up a notebook i think this one's a great
choice as a writer it's important for you to find inspiration in different ways just like how you
would change your environment to write sometimes if you say like i need to go to a coffee shop
to people watch or something changing your actual tools can actually help with
that inspiration as well and i think a midori md notebook is a really good choice if you're trying
to just change it up for a bit maybe you've been working on a novel like i am in these hardcovers
and this book can be full of short stories or it could just be a journal when these ones are more
creative work or whatever my final verdict for its price i would say it's very fair it's a very fair
um alternative to some of these notebooks over here if you're interested in trying this midori
notebook there's a link in the description below if you're interested in seeing more notebook
review type videos like this one check out this video right here uh i'm elliot i make videos about
writing and the creative process if that interests you subscribe and i will see you real soon