Review: Nu Elite B5 Polypropylene Notebook - Pink

The Nu elite polypropylene notebook range of notebooks are quite nice! Thank you to Nuco for sending this notebook to me for review!

ABOUT

Size: B5
Color: White
Ruling: Lined
Weight: 100 gsm
Sheet Count: 160
MSRP: £3.99
Where to buy: See Nuco
(also Office Works in Australia, UAE & Wal-Mart in Canada)

APPEARANCE

This notebook is B5 sized with a flexible polypropylene front and back cover in a fairly hot pink! It has a black double wire bound binding, and has "nu: elite" written on the front in black, in the upper corner. Inside, the lined pages are perforated. The lines seem to be greyish and are not too dark nor too light. They are also double hole punched near the center of the page. The front and back covers are larger than the pages inside but are loose on the coils, so they do move around.

PERFORMANCE & FEEL

The Nu: elite polypropylene notebook very much surprised me in its performance. It's a cute notebook but I really wasn't expecting anything spectacular because I'd never heard of it before - I know - judging a book by its cover, right? Bad me. The paper is smooth to the touch and has a little bit of a coating, though not to the extent of being glossy. It is fairly heavy at 100 gsm so this was promising.

Pencils, ballpoints, rollerballs, and gel pens work just fine on this paper. But you don't care about that, do you? No. You want to know how it works with fountain pens, so let's get to that. In summary - the paper performs beautifully with fountain pens! The paper was tested using one of my wettest fountain pens: my wet noodle Waterman 52V with Sailor Jentle Grenade ink. Delicious results - no feathering, no bleed through, and very, very minimal show through. The other exciting part is the paper brings out the sheen in inks - as is very obvious with the Sailor Jentle Grenade here.

As it is a coated paper, drying times are slightly longer than with "regular" paper. With fine nibs and/or dry inks, you can expect a quick dry time of around 20 - 30 seconds. With wetter inks and nibs, dry time extends to up to a minute and can still smear beyond that, so be careful!

It is a lovely paper to use - the Pilot Parallel 6.0 mm is gorgeous on this paper - crisp and precise lines with no bleed through, even where the the ink pools. The writing experience is smooth and pleasant. I am quite impressed and very pleased. Ink colors are vivid and intense on the page.

Hooray! There's a sheen!

PROS

• Bright and attractive notebook.  
• Flexible cover.
• Fountain pen friendly - no bleed through, no show through, no feathering.
• Papers tear off with ease so notebook remains tidy.
• Sturdy wire bound binding. 
• Square page holes are loose enough that pages do not rip when being turned.  
• Paper has had woody lignins removed - paper will therefore not yellow and become brittle with age. (Whether this could be described as archival, I cannot say for certain because I have not tested it!)

CONS  

• Wasted space beyond the margin.
• Slow drying time with wet inks. 
• Loose front and back covers - a downside to wire bound notebooks!

OVERALL 

I am very pleased to find a paper that performs so well with fountain pens, especially with so many pages in the notebook! I love that all the pages are perforated - great for writing letters to my pen pals. The build of the notebook is sturdy. Highly recommended. I wouldn't mind some more notebook cover colors though...!

This notebook was provided to me for review by Nuco International, free of charge. I was not compensated monetarily. All opinions you read here are 100% my own!