Review (and Giveaway!): Rhodia Large Dot Grid Webnotebook (Update - Giveaway entries are closed)

Thanks to the generosity of Karen at Exaclair, I was able to take a Rhodia Large (A5 size) Dot Grid Webnotebook for a spin recently. And, I am forwarding Karen's generosity on to one of my readers by giving this puppy away! Details on the giveaway at the end of the post.

There's been a lot of excitement about the dot grid "webbie" after the runaway success of the original webbie and the Rhodia Dot Pad. The Dot Grid Webnotebook is a combination of the best of both worlds.




The Review
 The heart of any notebook is its paper and, as you'd expect, the paper in this notebook does not disappoint. Silky smooth, as always (too smooth for some people), and wonderful for fountain pens. Even with heavily saturated inks, you have to really let you pen nib linger before you'll see any bleedthrough. Only the darkest inks show through to any noticeable degree. And feathering? Fuggedaboutit. All this means the paper also has the same drawback you're used to: slow drying times. If you insist on using a fountain pen, this is not a good notebook for on-the-go writing, because closing the notebook too soon after you've written in it is going to result in lots of ink transfer to the opposite page . . . unless you use a sheet of blotting paper for a bookmark.

Great ink handling at the price of slow drying time. Note the dot grid ruling.

So, tell you something you don't already know, right? OK, let's start with the purely subjective stuff.

I gotta say I liked the orange cover a lot more than I thought I would. It looked much too loud to me when I saw it on the website, but when I opened the package from Karen, I said, "Cool!" For me, the color would be quite practical if it was to make this my work notebook. That orange really stands out on a messy desk! Like the black webbie (version 1, anyway), the end papers, ribbon bookmark, and elastic closure all match the cover, so there's an awful lot of orange. Not sure you'll like it? I say try it!

As much as I like the orange cover, I'm not as thrilled by the ivory paper. It looks way too yellow to me, but that seems to be an effect of all the orange around it. When I placed this notebook side-by-side with my first generation webbie, it looked like the paper colors were identical.

Old ivory and new ivory appear identical side-by-side, but can look different based on cover color.

The dot spacing, like the grid lines on Rhodia graph pads, is 5mm, so it's very easy to adapt to if you're used to the pads. This is a very frustrating spacing for me and my writing style — too large for me to write every other line, too small to write every line — but that's just me. The dot grid is for more than just writing, anyway. The unobtrusive dot pattern provides just enough guidance for spacing drawings, diagrams, or doodles without getting in the way.  (Does one ever need precise doodle spacing? That's taking OCD to the next level!) I don't draw much, though. My notebooks are full of boring text.

The notebook has the standard back pocket, but the gussets on this one appear exceptionally sturdy. Same soft leatherette cover, same embossed Rhodia logo on the cover, as the old webbie.

One surprise is that this webbie did not lie particularly flat, because that was supposed to be an improvement over the first generation. When I looked at the picture I took, though (I'm finishing this post away from home and the webbie), it appears I did not have the binding flat on the table, so who knows how flat this thing lies. All I know is that it will break in, as even my old webbie lies pretty flat.

Overall, a great notebook!

The Giveaway

To enter, do BOTH of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post, AND;

2. Email me at notebookeresqATgmail.com. Your email must give the name you used for commenting and the subject line must read EXACTLY:

WEBBIE

I do it this way to be sure I can contact the winners and so I can set up an email filter to group all entries as they come in. I will keep the giveaway open through at least midnight Pacific time on Tuesday, July 19.

The winner will be selected using the random number generator at random.org.

Good luck!

Review (and Giveaway!): Rhodia Large Dot Grid Webnotebook (Update - Giveaway entries are closed)