Filofax 2018 Pocket One Day On A Page Review

[Mister5]

Filofax One Day on a Page Diary refill review

 

It's about the time of year where new planners and refills are available. I've used Filofaxes before and have a Personal Domino and a Pocket Malden. These have been sleeping in the attic until I broke out the Pocket Malden to use as a kind of bullet journal and log for what I've done for the day at work, but not as a planner. At work I use Outlook extensively for planning. I've also used the One Day on a Page refills as a journal, but now I use other alternatives.

The dimensions according to the package at 81mm x 120mm, with white 80gsm paper.

The pages include a full year calendar on one page for 2018, and one for 2017 and 2018 on the other side. Note that all monthly calendars shown start on Monday and end on Sunday. Also there is a page where you can enter personal information, and reference materials for religious holidays and various country information.

As is standard, there is a page where you can register the Filofax and get a code to write down, where if the Filofax is lost, the person who found it can contact Filofax with the code and the finder will get a "reward" if it is lost. For some reason, this is on the left side of the page. My preference would have been for this to be on the right side, so that would be the first thing someone would see if they found the Filofax, rather than have to flip open the first page.

Now let's get to the meat of it, the diary pages. For each page, at the top, there is the Month, Day, Year, Day of Week, and week of the year information. The monthly calendar for the current or next month appears at the bottom of the page. If there are holidays, those appear at the top os the page.

What is different from this version from the previous one I used (2016) was the 2016 version had all black text, while this version has certain text in blue - the holidays and the day of the week, as well as the hours. The lines denoting where you would write your entries are black.

Now, they call this "One Day on a Page" but it should be called "One Day on a Page but not the Weekends Page." For Saturdays and Sundays, they put two days on a page. This I see as a serious downside, as there are some folks who work heavily during the weekend, as well as for busy parents whose weekends are packed.

If this is a problem, there is an off-the-shelf alternative, but not for the Pocket Filofax. For at least the Personal, there is a Day on Two Pages versions which I believe (but I am not absolutely sure - it did a couple years ago) may have the Saturdays and Sundays each as a full page. It's a bit more costly, having more pages. They appear to put action items on the second page for each day for that version, and some bizarre choice for how the monthly calendar appears, which I guess they might use in Starfleet. Still, I might get that version for the Personal Filofax. There are templates you can print out for the various Filofaxes but (a) I am lazy; ( I don't have the requisite paper punch; and (c) I don't have something that can cut that much paper.

I put about 3 months worth of pages in my Filofax but of course you can ditch some of your other pages if you want to plug some more in, or thin it down if you want less.

Line spacing is very narrow. I'd estimate it at 4 mm. For those of you using it to schedule hourly appointments, the hours appear in blue from 8 to 12, then 1 to 8. There is a break in the lines running vertically through the page. I suppose if someone had microprint they could break up the time into a quarter of an hour and denote their appointments that way but I doubt that may be practical... maybe on the half hour.

As for performance against various inks and pencils, it is very good, as you can see from the pictures! Now, I didn't test it against a flex nib or against a gusher but I think the pens and pencils I used are representative of what someone would actually use. I just used what I had handy. The ball point, Kuru Toga, and extra fine nibs worked the best, practically speaking. Obviously with this narrow line spacing, I won't be using a medium or probably even a fine nib on this, but it can be done. In terms of the performance against the inks ... even with a wet ink like Aurora Black, I didn't get bleedthrough. A little bit of showthrough but totally acceptable.

I look forward to using this come the New Year, and maybe to even get the Day on Two Pages for the personal Filofax.

Images:

Front

Back [A little bit of showthrough, quite usable. In the past the Filofax paper was not the best in terms of performance when using a fountain pen, but I didn't see any feathering or bleedthrough, just a bit of showthrough.]