Moleskine Folio Professional Folder A4 with Paper Inserted
I’ve been hanging on to this new-ish release from Moleskine for a while now. It is an A4 Sized (about 9″ x 13″) folder that is part of the Moleskine Folio Professional series. One would think that a review of a folder could be accomplished rather quickly, or that it actually wouldn’t even be necessary, but I’ve learned otherwise thanks to the Moleskine Folio Professional Folder. This will be a short review, but well worth your time if you were considering one of these folders to store your documents.
Moleskine Folio Professional Folder A4 Closed
Admittedly the photos for this review are not my best work, however I was having all kinds of trouble getting good results of an almost completely black product, so you will have to work with me here. The photo above shows the closed folder, and what I was trying to capture are the black plastic (but metal backed) rivets that hold the flaps of the folder together. The quality of the rivets and the folder itself seem quite sturdy. The flap opens and closes fairly easily and the folder can stand up to being knocked around a bit too.
The surface of the Moleskine Folio Professional folder is fairly smooth, and has that grainy and leathery look to it, but has a curiously waxy feel to it when you pick it up. The thing that really sticks out about this item though is that it STINKS! Now I don’t mean it stinks like a cheap ballpoint pen that rattles and leaves globs of ink, I mean it stinks heavily like petroleum or maybe some sort of chemical. I’m not typically very sensitive to smells, so I don’t think this is “just me” because the smell actually leaves a very short and slight irritated feeling in my nasal cavity and the very far back of the roof of my mouth when I smell it. This thing has been out of its package for a few months now, and besides being carried around in my laptop bag for a bit, it has also sat on a shelf airing out. Although the smell has slightly dissipated, it is still very strong, and still causes that uncomfortable feeling if I sniff it up close.
Regardless of how nice looking this folder is, no matter how high the quality appears to be, and no matter how useful it may appear, there is just no way I could recommend anyone buy this based on the odor that it puts out. The only possible thing I might say is that if you MUST have one of these, you can wait until a little later in March when there is a purple version of it coming out that might not stink, but I have no way to know for sure, it is purely an optimistic guess on my part that maybe the change in color will somehow change the smell. I really don’t like to completely trash a product because quite often different people have different uses and different preferences, but unless I just got a freakishly stinky version I can’t imagine someone wanting to have this thing within a 3 foot radius of themselves due to the smell.
©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.
