welcome everyone i'm elliot and today we are talking about
notebooks uh i have here with me the dingbats
wildlife a5 this is the orange tiger version
it comes in multiple designs uh for example
the red one is a kangaroo the purple one is a hippopotamus and the blue one's a
dolphin i chose the tiger because it is a ferocious animal and i hope to
bring my own ferocity to my writing and it's also orange
which i thought was a really nice color to have for a notebook so
that's the one i chose so let's get into this just first impressions here
the cover is 100 recyclable it's made out of a vegan biodegradable full
leather so that's good to know so if you're like
ah this is garbage it's not actually garbage you can
recycle this it is a threadbound notebook with 192
micro perforated pages so if you look here at the edge
you might not be able to see it but there's a thin seam
a perforation very small like it still holds pretty well but
if i really wanted to i could just easily tear
one of the pages out one of these dotted pages so that's just a nice
option i think i don't imagine myself
pulling pages out of this notebook that's
not how i'm gonna use this um but for other people for
yourself if you're like using this as like an actual school notebook and
you're jotting down notes or to pass notes around to your crush uh
this is a perfect notebook to get because you could just easily rip it out
without destroying the rest of your rest of your book here notebook journal
diary so it comes with one of these bookmarks i find these pretty useful
the electrum 1917 notebook that i had had two of them and it was the first
time having two of them and i was like this is actually really useful
especially when i was transcribing my work
and also writing at the same time it was good to have
different parts of it bookmarked it just saved
you know let's say probably like seconds but
every second counts right so this one only has one which is fine
uh this is the wildlife collection there's also the earth
collection that dingbat creates and that one
has two so it's a more premium notebook this is nice it comes with a
pen holder right here you just
squeeze one of these guys in and then off you go i wish i had somewhere to go
with this uh maybe a museum or something maybe a field trip if i was going off to
a field trip this will be a nice thing to have
like i'm off to school and this this will
if i was going to high school this would be all i bring i would um
take whatever homework sheet the teacher gives me i'll just like shove it in here
and then off i go and i'll just pen paper
off to hang out with my crew i think this would be a really nice one for
school actually if you're just bringing it on the go and you don't want to carry
a lot of stuff and a notebook is all you have this is
great if you don't want to carry a bag having
this pen is actually really helpful sometimes you put in your
pocket and you lose it no one has time for that if you're
carrying a notebook it's good to have like a pen strapped into it
i i sometimes just throw it in there and just like squeeze it and that kind of
destroys the whole book so what i'm saying is i really like this
feature even though it looks kind of dorky just
like kind of hanging out like this and also back here we have the
expandable pockets with the these the dingbats information sheet
with me what is this uh for any complaints please
contact us okay i'll deal with this later um so
this is good just a little pouch for you to put
your notes any notes any sort of
things you collect during the course of the day notes from your crush
it's just a nice little expandable pocket for you to put it in
fold's very nice very clean almost nicer than electrum
1917 to be honest which kind of left a lot of the sort of edge
terrace steps happening and sometimes i end up kind of missing getting
falling off my page and onto the next page i guess that is
where the wideness comes in handy so you just you're able to finish your
thought on one sentence another thing that would
have been a nice to have is that this book doesn't have any page numbers which
the lectrum 1917 one that i was previously using did it
was actually really nice to have the page
numbers because it gets i could see how much i
write from week to week just by looking at the pages and not having to really
count and it was good to see the progress as
i move from the beginning of the book to the end so now it is a good time to talk
about the price i got this for 26.95 canadian on
amazon.ca i believe you could get it for 19.95
american on amazon.com so in terms of price
it's very much comparable to electrum 1917
and moleskin it isn't so much of a cheaper option
more of an alternative it's also worth mentioning that
if you are buying this from the uk dingbats
is donating two percent of their revenue to
the world wildlife foundation wwf uh two percent goes to them dingbat
comes with a bit of history it's produced by one of the oldest paper
companies in lebanon it started around the 1800s
so overall i think this is a very nice notebook it has all the standard
features that one can expect from a notebook of
this price has the elastic closer here
one thing that is worth mentioning is that it is actually quite
wide it is wider than this electrum one i had here which i already found was a
little bit too wide it's actually wider and taller
it's just a bigger book in general which might take a bit of getting used to
it might be a little more clumsy in your hand
as you try to move it around it doesn't feel as nice i'm not a big fan of this
leather leather cover the scaly texture i'm not super
you know in on it i'd rather have it be like a nice smooth
softer kind of i guess this helps with the grip
when you're gripping it it's very nicely designed to be honest
so i appreciate the details of that the paper is 100 gsm cream colored
and gfsm just means gram per square meter
the the electrum one that i have here is 80 gsm so this is actually
thicker between 60 to 100 it tends to be a good number 80 is about standard
and anything around 160 that becomes like
card so that's a bit about the paper now let's jump right into the pen test
which is probably the most important part about reviewing
a notebook so i tested it with four different types of pens i tested it with
the bic ballpoint pen i tested it with
the paper mate felt tip pen i tested it with the paper mate erasable
gel pen and i tested it with the pentel energel
metal ballpoint pen this pen is my favorite by the way
because i've been using uh fountain pens for a while and it just
gets everywhere it becomes a total mess this one i feel it's uh it writes about
as smooth as a fountain pen so i highly recommend
it if you're looking for a good pen to go with a notebook so
overall the paper took the ink really well for most of them it looks
pretty nice to be honest regardless of the different pens used
and the thing that impressed me the most is that there's hardly any ghosting at
least not how i'm writing and i think that is just
the testament to the nicer paper the thicker paper at some
point it could be too thick but this is perfect to have it not go
through that's ideal overall i think this is a very versatile notebook i
think it's great for students i think it's great for people who are traveling
who are journaling who are trying to keep notes who are
also unafraid to like rip things out and share things so those
are my thoughts on the sting bats wildlife
a5 notebook honestly i didn't know what to expect when i ordered it
it's actually a really nice surprise almost relief that it is
this uh high quality of a notebook thank you for watching please feel free to
share your thoughts on this notebook or any others
i'm always looking for recommendations and if you're interested
in videos about writing and the creative process check out these ones
right here i'm elliott i'll talk to you real soon