The New Levenger 90g Paper

A few weeks ago I did a review comparing the new Staples ARC paper the similar Levenger paper.  In that comparison, the Staples ARC came out ahead, however I was contacted by Levenger after the review and notified that they had recently upgraded all of their standard paper to a nicer 90g version.  The offered to send over some of the new Levenger 90g Circa Refills for me to take a look at and compare again, so here we are today with a new comparison.

Levenger 90g Circa Refills Front

The new Levenger 90g Circa refills definitely write nicely and does MUCH better than the previous versions when it comes to any show though.  The sample you see above uses a few different fountain pens and inks, as well as a few other pen types.  I tried to use mostly dark inks to make sure that if something was going to show through, it would be obvious. On the front of the page, everything went well, as expected with no feathering or any other bad behavior to be seen with the inks.

Levenger 90g Circa Refill Back with no Show-through

Now above you can see the back side of that same sheet of paper, and there is virtually no show-through to be found.  Pretty impressive considering the old Levenger paper which I was using in my daily planner shows through pretty strongly.  There were slight hints of show-through on the Lamy Studio with the Noodlers Bernanke Blue ink, and with the Uniball Vision Elite, however both of  those situations were so minimal that they don’t even show up in the scan.  Bottom line though is that you should have no problem with show-through with most pens and inks, on this paper, although I’ve only tested with F and EF nibs, so wider nibs could possibly get different results.

Staples ARC System Writing Sample Front

Now just to close the loop on the Staples ARC comparison to the new Levenger paper, here are the same pens and inks written on a smaller sheet of the ARC paper.  On the front of the page, they all did well with no feathering, and they all wrote very smoothly.

Staples ARC System Writing Sample Back with SOME show-through in the Red Box.

Now on the back of the Staples ARC paper, the results were also really good, however there was a  slight bit of show-through with the Lamy Studio and Noodler’s Bernanke Blue ink.  The show-through here was not bad at all, but in comparison there was a noticeale difference.  I would say that the show-through on a scale from 1-10, with 1 being non-existent, the Levenger is probably a 2, and the Staples Arc is probably a 3.

Summary of the Levenger 90g Circa refills

Levenger 90g Circa refills definitely do a slight bit better in terms of minimal show-through, but I’m still a huge fan of the Levenger Rhodia Circa paper, which in my mind you just can’t beat.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.