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Apica Premium CD Notebook - White Paper - Grid
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I am proud to present Apica's line of "Premium CD" notebooks. Please don't confuse these with their regular CD notebooks - the Premium line is a whole different class, and the quality reflects it.
Indeed, they really are "premium". The paper is super-smooth and fountain pen friendly, and because of its excellent thread binding, the book is sturdy, easy to open, and lays flat.
These are easily as high quality as any high-end notebooks from anyone else.
This is the 5mm grid version. The following sizes are available:
A4: 210 x 297mm
B5: 182 x 257mm (note that this is "JIS-B" size. The more common ISO size is 176 x 250mm)
A5: 148 x 210mm
All sizes have 96 sheets/192 pages.
Product Reviews
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My primary notebook for technical work
Posted by Unknown on 8th Feb 2016
I'm a researcher in a mathematical field and have found the Apica Premium CD Notebook -- Grid to be a fantastic writing experience with a fountain pen. I know this may come off as blasphemy among the notebook cognoscenti, but I even prefer it to the Seven Seas Crossfield, though in many ways this is comparing apples to oranges.
The Apica Premium CD -- Grid has heavier paper with almost a vellum-like texture. The paper feels soft and smooth. It's top notch for fountain pens, in with my Lamy Al-Star (using Lamy ink) there's been no feathering or bleeding. The performance is similar to Tomoe River paper, except that the paper is noticeably thicker and smoother. It feels more like a refined product, whereas Tomoe River paper is much more utilitarian: similarly capable, but fitting many more pages in.
In the end, I use my Apica Premium CD -- Grid and my Seven Seas Crossfield for different things: the Apica is used for storing important results (proofs, derivations, reference values) for use as a reference, while the Seven Seas notebook is used for daily logging, working out longer thoughts where I'd like to save a whole thought process.
I'll also say that the Apica grids are just the right thickness and color: they're unobtrusive, but very subtly guide your writing and technical drawings. From a distance you don't see the grid at all, but when writing you don't have to worry about losing alignment. Personally, I find these much more useful than dot-grids (or even the cross field, which are slightly better than dot grids).
The downside to these notebooks is that they're relatively short, 95 sheets limit how much you can store in one notebook. The binding is fantastic, of a similar quality (to my crude eye) to the Seven Seas notebooks, but the covers (which are a thick paper) do get beat up a bit with time---I tend to keep the cellophane product cover on, even though I think it was meant to simply be product packaging.
There are also hardcover versions that have not quite cracked into the US notebook market. They're quite a bit more expensive (esp. when one includes shipping from Japan), but they look like they could easily replace people's favorite Leuchtturm 1917s or Rhodia Webnotebooks.