This is a review for the Oxford A5 Spiral-bound notebook, made by Oxford, although this particular product was purchased at Partners Stationers UK.

These books seem not to be listed on the website, but in Partners they are part of the 'Office' range, and had a ruler/marking page made from plastic.

I have always been a lover of spiral bound books, probably due to my being left-handed, and having the option to flip the page right round. This book is similar, and opens and closes easily. I got two because they were on a buy one, get one free offer, and at £3.99, an absolute bargain!

The paper is a 90gsm lined and marginalised paper, and is amply thick enough to accomodate fountain pen ink on both sides of the page. I used both Yard O Led Blue/Black and also tried Parker's Quink Black on the paper, and they print onto the paper with practically no bleeding through or feathering. I was very suprised, as most of the budget books I tend to go for, I can only use one side of the page... Great!
The covers are a plastic variety, and state a clear 'Office Book' on the front, and are available in different colours. The two I had were Grey/Silver, and Metallic Blue. After a week's use, I feel they are quite sturdy, accept my fountain pens very well, and are excellent, cheap notebooks, ideal for journalling and note-taking. If I had thought about it, I would have stocked up on these by the bucketload :doh:

Great books, and well worthy of attention if you are in the UK and near a Partners. They have also revised their fountain pen range, and I will probably be getting their top of the range Parker FP from them soon (yet another FP to add to the list).

I will post a sample of writing tomorrow. It's late for me and don't really know what to write yet.

Hiya. Earlier this year I bought a couple of the Oxford A6 sewn softbound notebooks, and they are probably the best notebooks I've ever used. The paper (the sizing is trademarked as 'Optik') is first class with FP inks, but the best feature of these books is that they lie completely flat. In fact, if you open them at any point the book flattens out with a satisfying thud. I find this is a problem with nearly all other notebooks - Black n' Red, the overrated Clairefontaine, Miquelrius, Ciak, etc. Though Moleskines (which are too expensive to write freely in in my view) are satisfactory in this department.

Much better than Clairefontaine for fountain pen ink, they open better, and they're 79p for 96 leaves/192 pages from Staples in Britain (though since their minimum postage is about GBP2.90 you need to buy more than one or two.)

They're part of the Oxford "Office" range if you're interested. Staples item number is 375149.

This is really useful!

Sounds like a great notebook and their website had some very interesting notebook products. Quick search on google didn't show any US online retailers. Does anyone know if these are available in US?

Chris, although I live in the UK I did look, out of curiosity, for American sources for these notebooks. If memory serves, Staples US do not stock them (though it might be worth double-checking), and I didn't find any other sources either. (I was looking, of course, because many of the boards I frequent, like this one, are heavily populated by Americans). Well worth your searching for them yourself in the US, but they're so cheap (approx $1.70?) they might be worth buying from here in a batch. The only drawback to these notebboks (and it's not a real one at all) is that they're a teeny weeny bit officey, if you know what I mean, and they can wear a little bit (though all pocket notebooks do, and I find that endearing so long as the thing doesn't actually fall apart).

If I can find my camera, I'll post a couple of pics later on.

After reading this topic, I decided to buy some Oxford paper for my new FP. The Office range is listed in detail on their site if you switch to German. I bought a notepad from both the 'Office' range and the 'International' range to compare.

The International range paper is 80g/m2 white "Premium-Paper" (Office is 90g/m2 "Optik-paper"). It writes a bit more smooth than the Office paper (which is already smooth), but the lines of my FP with EF nib are a bit thicker compared to the Office paper (Waterman Florida blue ink). The difference is small, but it makes me write just a bit larger. I wrote the same text on both types of paper, splitting lines at the same point. The lines written on Office paper are about half an inch shorter (A4 size paper).

It has been a while since I last wrote with FP and I am surprised by the FP unfriendly paper these days. Even several 'writing' notepads are very FP unfriendly. Out of curiosity, I tried some 'old' paper (using the margins) and found they all write well. I cannot remember that in the past (15+ years ago) I had to select paper for use with a FP. For the moment I'll stay with the Oxford Office paper.