I do a lot of notebook browsing on Amazon, and therefore see a ton of sponsored product recommendations for notebooks. Most of them are not that interesting. But the Taotree Notebook started popping up a lot a few months ago and I was intrigued. So many of the generic notebooks you see on Amazon only have lined pages, or they only offer an A5 size, but Taotree offered a 9x14cm dot-grid notebook. With 120 GSM paper! At the time I ordered, there was a promotional price of only $6.99 for a 2-pack, which is just insane. How could I not buy them?! But would the quality deliver? Read on…
The notebooks arrive shrinkwrapped, but without any external branding materials. I’m assuming they aren’t sold in physical stores anywhere, so it isn’t needed, and that helps them keep the price down. The cover is a plain black faux-leather with a pleasant soft feel. The only logo is a subtle stamped brand name on the back cover.
It is thicker than a Moleskine cover, but not quite as chunky as a Rhodia Webnotebook. The cover overhang is nice and small on the top and bottom, but a bit wider at the opening edge. On one of the notebooks I received, the back edge overhang was slightly wider, due to the page block being glued in with the spine at a slight angle, but otherwise everything was even and square.
The construction seems solid– I flexed the covers back and forth more than I usually do and the page block seemed very stable and securely attached. The other notebook in my 2-pack had no asymmetry at all, and the only tiny defect I could find was that there was a little extra glue in the spine that caused the cover to stick down instead of flexing freely. I was able to dislodge this easily without damaging anything. Bottom line, their quality control seems to be as good or better than many more expensive brands.
The Taotree notebook opens nice and flat. The endpapers are totally plain. In addition to the standard ribbon marker, elastic closure (of the perfect length and tension for tucking into the back cover if you want it out of the way) and expanding back pocket with cloth-reinforced sides, there is a pen loop attached to the back cover. For me, this is actually a downside, as I personally don’t like pen loops. But it was really easy to just cut the pen loop off with some sharp pointy scissors. The threads pulled out easily, so I am left with some small holes on the back cover, but that bothers me way less than the pen loop. I’ll also need to inject a little glue to hold down the endpaper where the pen loop was, as it looks a bit loose now, but that is also no big deal.
Inside, you get 9 stitched signatures for a total of 144 pages (72 sheets). As noted above it is 120 GSM dot grid, in a cooler/brighter white shade than the somewhat creamy color of Moleskine paper. It is super smooth and absolutely luscious to write on. I’ve noticed in some dot grid or lined notebooks that the dots or lines can resist certain inks, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Taotree notebook.
It has some of the best performance I’ve seen on bleed-through and show-through, even when I was pressing down hard with a flexible nib. The only disappointment with the paper was some very slight feathering with some fountain pens and a couple of other wet rollerball pens. But I would definitely call this a fountain pen friendly notebook.
I don’t always test fountain pen drying times but I gave it a whirl on the Taotree and results seemed pretty good– the TWSBI Eco with Diamine ink took the longest to dry at 15 seconds, but the Pilot Justus/Sailor ink was dry at 5 seconds. Even Apache Sunset ink, which often takes the longest to try, stopped smearing by 10-15 seconds.
This is really a great little notebook, and the value is amazing. The Taotree notebook offers great paper and solid construction at less than half the price of the competition. The $6.99 price that I was able to snag is no longer in effect as of this writing– a 2-pack is currently $12.49 $9.99 which is still incredible for this quality, and at least of of writing this, I’m seeing a 10% off coupon code on the lined 2-packs, and a $2 off coupon code on the dot-grid 2-packs (coupon code seems to be gone). And there is one other thing that makes the Taotree notebook a no-brainer: they offer a 90-day warranty. If you don’t like the notebook, they will give you a refund. I have no need to put that to the test, but the overwhelmingly positive Amazon reviews seem to indicate that customers are happy with the notebooks or the customer service, or both. I haven’t used the Taotree notebook as a daily carry yet, but I know I will someday. If daily usage changes my strong “buy this!” recommendation, I will post an update!
As far as I know, these are only sold on Amazon:
Taotree 3.5 x 5.5″ dot grid notebook 2-pack
Taotree 3.5 x 5.5″ lined notebook 2-pack
Other Taotree notebooks and markers
Other than the small commission I earn on purchases through these Amazon links, I have not been compensated for this review in any way, and I purchased these samples with my own money.