I love getting the chance to review new (or new to me) brands of notebooks. I had not heard of iScholar when they contacted me to offer these free samples, but I was interested to see what they had to offer, especially as I probably don’t give enough attention to notebooks meant for school use. So let’s celebrate back to school time by taking a look at these!

At first glance, I could see that these notebooks were a cut above anything I used as a student back in the 1980s. The larger iScholar 3 subject college ruled notebook has a traditional format, upgraded with a wire-o binding and plastic covers. The front cover has a translucent sleeve so you can insert your own customized page. The inside front and back cover are a glossy white material that I believe will work like a whiteboard with wipe-off markers. (This is not called out anywhere on the notebook, and I didn’t test it.) The back cover has a small hole where you can clip a pen. The front cover is notched so you can see the inner tabs and access them quickly.

Inside, you have a front page with space for personal info, and note-taking tips on the back. Then you come to the first of 3 plastic divider pages. These each have a translucent diagonal pocket, and the tabs are said to allow wipe-off writing so you can re-label your subjects if needed. The other nice thing about these tabs is that they can be moved to a different spot in the notebook if you want.

The pages are college-ruled and the paper is pretty typical of a student notebook: blue lines, a red margin, 3-hole punched, and thin paper that will make you shudder in horror if you are used to fancy fountain-pen friendly paper! Lots of bleed-through and feathering, but I wouldn’t expect otherwise for a notebook made for the student market.

On iScholar’s own website, this notebook has a list price of $10.99 (and as of this writing is discounted to $8.99) so I was surprised to see that the price for this notebook was over $19 on Amazon.  I will admit that I just don’t pay that much attention to this segment of the market, and was also surprised to see that other 3-subject notebooks of this size are also more expensive than I’d thought. I haven’t done an exhaustive point-by-point comparison of features between brands, but from what I can see online, the iScholar notebook seems to be pretty fairly priced given all the features it offers vs. a similar Mead notebook priced at $13-16 on Amazon depending on the cover color.

The smaller 3-subject notebook is designed to be used in a business  setting (though it would work equally well for any student who isn’t required to use full size paper). The exterior is a little more upscale, with a faux leather edge covering the wire-o binding, and an elastic closure. The cover is a grey textured plastic. Branding information is on a removable sticker.

Again there is a hole to clip a pen, and notches so you can see the inner tabs, though they are cut in a deeper shape so the points between them are a bit sharp. There are plastic dividers with pockets that can be moved around within the notebook, this time all in a light grey.

The pages inside are designed for a specific kind of note-taking, but the format should be handy for most purposes. It allows you to put the main body of your notes in one section, with spaces around it for a date and subject header, a column to pull out cues, and a summary at the bottom.

I almost didn’t bother to test the paper, assuming it would be the same as that in the other notebook. But luckily, I did do a full test and was very pleasantly surprised! This paper is much better. There is still some bleeding and feathering with some wetter fountain pens, but my TWSBI Eco barely bled at all, and the paper performed just as well as many others I’ve tested in pricier journal lines.

This notebook is also available on Amazon at $19.99, or on the iScholar website for $10.99, currently marked down to $8.99.

These iScholar notebooks were a pleasant reminder of my school days, and I would have loved to use them back then! I will be giving both of these samples away, one each to two randomly selected winners. (One or two pages has been used for my pen tests, but they are otherwise brand new.) Here’s how you can enter:

On Twitter, tweet something containing “iScholar 3 Subject Notebook @NotebookStories”, and follow @NotebookStories .

On Facebook, “like”  the Notebook Stories page  and post something containing the words “iScholar 3 Subject Notebook” on the Notebook Stories page.

On your blog, post something containing the words “iScholar 3 Subject Notebook” and “Notebook Stories” and link back to this post, also leaving a comment below with the link in case the trackback doesn’t work.

The deadline for entry is Friday September 14, 2018 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!