on saleEndless Recorder A5 Notebook - Deep Ocean, Dot Grid

The Quo Vadis Habana was my ideal notebook - dot grid, very white, Clairefontaine paper with a sturdy cover. Alas, it is not sold anymore so I had to hunt for a replacement, and this Endless Recorder notebook is what I came up with. It's not perfect, but not bad. The paper is nice and smooth and relatively thick. It's white (hooray!), but not as white as Clairefontaine, against which it looks very off-white. There's a little bleed-through and ghosting with wet pens/inks, but it's not terrible. I haven't had any feathering yet, though. Dry time is a little bit slow and I've smeared a few pages when forgetting this. It's nicely put-together, overall. I like the numbered pages and TOC, including the font they've used. It has two bookmark ribbons and a pocket at the back. The cover is a nice shade of blue and is sturdy. I'd still prefer slightly better paper but will definitely keep this one for this year's bullet journal.

Not sure what is going on with the current production of this notebook, but the Regalia paper is really poor with fountain pen inks. The build quality is only so-so for this price level... there are too few signatures for this many pages so it's hard to get it to lay flat. The gluing on the signatures makes it so some of the pages are bound together closer and others are further from the spine, which is weird. The printing of the dots is not always even on all pages and they are spaced differently from the edges on various pages. But my biggest issue by far is that the Regalia paper is just really bad. The lines from my pens are one or two sizes larger on this paper than something like Rhodia or Tomoe. It sucks up ink like crazy so heavy sheening inks barely sheen at all. Even Nitrogen barely sheens on this paper. There is feathering and tons of bleed through. Wet nibs even bleed onto the pages below, but even drier and finer nibs make it so you definitely can't use both sides of the page. At half this price, it would be an acceptable option for a budget notebook. However, this product is priced almost like Leuchtturm 120gsm, which is head-and-shoulders better in fit and finish. Rhodia, Tomoe, Cosmo Air, etc. are all much better options. I've seen some early reviews of Regalia online that were positive; and that leads me to believe that maybe they changed their supplier or paper since then because what is coming from them in mid-2023 is just sub par at this price point.

It's a nice smooth paper and a nice bright white. Of course my first inclination is to see how it is with bleed through and feathering. I gathered all the pens I had inked to see how they behaved. It was a bit of a coincidence that almost all of the pens I used had Japanese inks at the time. About 10 pens total. Furthermore, several of them were pigment inks. All the Japanese inks behaved wonderfully and look really colorful and crisp on this "Regalia" paper. The weirdo of the bunch was Diplomat Sepia. It feathered a bit and definitely bled through to the other side of the page. Very curious outlier. (Gorgeous ink BTW.) The nib I used was fairly wet but not crazy; frankly while Diplomat Sepia is not problematic in general, I do think it's to blame. I also one of the Sailor Ink Studio colors in a very wet Pelikan M800 and it did not bleed through --so it's not just the quantity of ink that caused the Diplomat to penetrate the paper. Moral of the story: Very nice paper and if you're mostly using Japanese inks then you'll be good to go with this notebook.

I really like this notebook but there are a couple of things I don't like. Pros: White paper!, no bleed through except with only the very wettest of my Broad and double broad nibs, nice texture to the cover (cloth-like), pocket in the back. Cons: I wish it came in a lined option. And my only pet peeve is that when opening the book flat, often the pages are glued together at the spine not allowing for the full width of the left page. Although it is only a few millimeters, it still bugs me. But, because of the white paper, I may switch to this notebook for my journal writing from the Rhodiarama notebooks, which have off-white paper. This paper is excellent!

Finally! A great notebook with white paper! The paper is very smooth. It did have some minor bleed through with a 1.1 mm nib. But overall the paper is very nice. The cover has a nice, coarse textured fabric covering it which feels good when I handle it. And I love that the paper is white. I just wish it came in a lined paper option. I really don't like dot grid.