"ZCZN" Chinese Sewn-binding "A5-ish" 45 cent Notebook

[trenchfoot]

From Amazon. Cheap Chinese Notebook... CCN. Brand is likely irrelevant -- I suspect both Ali and Amazon have a half dozen of these from different brands that come from the same factory -- but this brand (ZCZN) come in a 100 pack for $45, so I got some. That brand also has ruled(?)/graph/blank options. I have a journal setup where I prefer to plow through (and burn) notebooks, and I'm less picky than most people here about stationary, so cheap notebooks are all I get. These were a pleasant surprise to use with FPs. There are no labels whatsoever on the notebook, only the shrink wrap was branded. Kraft cover, 30 sheets, 60 pages. A sort of even eggshell color. Got the graph option because I'm used to it from university and appreciate being able to switch between 1cm rule for comfort and 5mm rule for high-density notes.

This journal cover is holding 3x CCN on top of 1x real A5 Tomoe River Lochby. Bright white copier paper in background shows off-white color of notebook.

You can see why quick-drying Pelikan 4001 RB is my primary ink by a wide margin. The only shimmery ink I own is the Majestic Blue, and the red shimmer on that is low here, but higher than 24lb copier paper. Less feathering with all these than seen in 24lb copier. Countdown is seconds before thumb-swipe dry test.

Rear side. See sharpie bleed for reference. This is significantly less bleedthrough than expected with any bargain notebook paper. The wet Lamy Medium often goes through cheap notebooks.

Sorry, bad picture of binding, but it's perfectly durable for a sewn binding. The bindings are aligned here. Beware the CCN claims about being "A5". That's a good centimeter extra horizontal on the real A5. And maybe 2mm extra vertical. It's definitely not half-letter, though, based on the vertical.

 

End of the day, I like writing in quantity for cheap and don't really feel a need for fancy paper. If someone asks for scratch paper, I don't mind handing that person a whole 45c journal instead.

 

Note: The graph lines are dark, and there is no dot grid variant. Beyond personal preference for dot grid over graph, this can potentially confound OCR software. My setup which uses a 4k camera and a vision LLM (qwen2.5vl:32b) seems to handle the graph grid fine when reading text, but it may be a problem depending on software/scanner.

[inkypete]

5 hours ago, trenchfoot said:

From Amazon. Cheap Chinese Notebook... CCN. Brand is likely irrelevant -- I suspect both Ali and Amazon have a half dozen of these from different brands that come from the same factory -- but this brand (ZCZN) come in a 100 pack for $45, so I got some. That brand also has ruled(?)/graph/blank options. I have a journal setup where I prefer to plow through (and burn) notebooks, and I'm less picky than most people here about stationary, so cheap notebooks are all I get. These were a pleasant surprise to use with FPs. There are no labels whatsoever on the notebook, only the shrink wrap was branded. Kraft cover, 30 sheets, 60 pages. A sort of even eggshell color. Got the graph option because I'm used to it from university and appreciate being able to switch between 1cm rule for comfort and 5mm rule for high-density notes.

This journal cover is holding 3x CCN on top of 1x real A5 Tomoe River Lochby. Bright white copier paper in background shows off-white color of notebook.

You can see why quick-drying Pelikan 4001 RB is my primary ink by a wide margin. The only shimmery ink I own is the Majestic Blue, and the red shimmer on that is low here, but higher than 24lb copier paper. Less feathering with all these than seen in 24lb copier. Countdown is seconds before thumb-swipe dry test.

Rear side. See sharpie bleed for reference. This is significantly less bleedthrough than expected with any bargain notebook paper. The wet Lamy Medium often goes through cheap notebooks.

Sorry, bad picture of binding, but it's perfectly durable for a sewn binding. The bindings are aligned here. Beware the CCN claims about being "A5". That's a good centimeter extra horizontal on the real A5. And maybe 2mm extra vertical. It's definitely not half-letter, though, based on the vertical.

 

End of the day, I like writing in quantity for cheap and don't really feel a need for fancy paper. If someone asks for scratch paper, I don't mind handing that person a whole 45c journal instead.

 

Note: The graph lines are dark, and there is no dot grid variant. Beyond personal preference for dot grid over graph, this can potentially confound OCR software. My setup which uses a 4k camera and a vision LLM (qwen2.5vl:32b) seems to handle the graph grid fine when reading text, but it may be a problem depending on software/scanner.

Look like they are amazing value.  Always a bonus when you buy a cheap notebook and they perform.

[RedPie]

Thanks for your write up. The quality don't seem to be bad at all. Very nice. I bought a notebook from TEMU and the paper quality is similar...😀

[AndyHayes]

Hi TrenchFoot

 

I am interested in the journal cover.  Can I ask which make and model is it?

 

Thanks

 

 

Andy

[trenchfoot]

1 hour ago, AndyHayes said:

Hi TrenchFoot

 

I am interested in the journal cover.  Can I ask which make and model is it?

 

Thanks

 

 

Andy

Lochby A5 journal cover. It's pretty nice.