Sometimes I’m a sucker for things that are orange, so the SamutNote handmade soft cover notebook with lay flat binding (buy via Amazon) pretty much jumped right off the page at me when I first saw it. The fact that it was handmade was also a really nice bonus.

Each notebook has a very soft fuzzy material that makes up the cover.  It seems almost like a crushed velvet but with slightly less depth and texture to it, but still very soft to the touch.  Although orange was my go to color choice, they are also available in black, gray, green, and brown.  The version I’m looking at here today and have been testing out measures 3.8″ by 5.7″ but there is also a larger 8.0″ by 5.6″ version available.

First, let me point out that I gave my notebook an unintended durability test when I dropped it (corner first of course) on a hard wood floor, so those creases you see on the corner are totally my fault and not an indication of the quality of these notebooks.  Each notebook has 200 pages of cream colored paper with gray ruled lines spaced at .25″ apart.  The lay flat threaded binding does a fairly good job at living up to that descriptive promise of actually laying flat.

Each of the colors and sizes comes in a package of 3 notebooks and the only branding on them is the “Samut Note” name that you see embossed in that crushed velvety material.  As you can see there is also a nice bit of color variation that reveals itself when you brush your hand against the grain of this fuzzy material.  I think overall the material, and the font style of the brand name give these a little bit of a retro feel, which isn’t usually my thing, but its also not that common to see with a notebook so its a nice change of pace.

SamutNote Notebook Writing Sample

The scan of the SamutNote Notebook Writing Sample bleached out the gray ruled lines of the notebook paper, but it does a great job of revealing the details of the writing experience with a few different pens.  I would say that on the surface there is some fountain pen friendliness to the paper, but with a closer look at this magnification level you do start to spot slight bits of feathering, but to the naked eye it looks totally fine.  The other liquid ink pens, gel ink pens, and Sharpie pen all wrote well and saw no issues with performance while writing.

On the flip side of the page though, the SamutNote Notebook writing sample shows through a bit, and to an extend that was a little much for my personal writing preferences since I do like to use both sides of a sheet of paper.  While the show through on the fountain ink was the worst, unfortunately the others were still pretty bad as well.  In what is an otherwise great looking, well constructed, and unique notebook, the show trough on the paper is just a bit too much and therefore a deal breaker for me.  If that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, or if you only use light pencil or some very light inks then this notebook is definitely worth it for the other nice aesthetics and can be grabbed here on Amazon.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.