Moleskine Evernote Squared Smart Notebook

[You can click on any of the photos to enlarge for more detail]

If you use bound notebooks then you are familiar with the Moleskine brand, that ubiquitous staple of artists and notetakers everywhere.

If you are a reader of my blog and/or a fountain pen user, you will know that I am not a fan. However, they occasionally develop a notebook that I feel I need to own:

Passions Dog Journal

Moleskine Meets Peanuts

So, I felt that I just had to own the new Evernote Smart Notebook, after all I adore Evernote and what could be better than combining a great notebook with a great app? 

The cover is great, embossed with the Evernote elephant and wonderful icons. Cool green elastic closure and green marker ribbon.

Moleskine includes these stickers which you apply to your pages. They assist Evernote in quickly organizing your pages, but they are not required to use the app.

This the "comprehensive how-to-use guide" mentioned on the Moleskine website. Um, comprehensive? It's the three points on the upper left side, consisting of a total of three sentences.

Here is where we run into the first spot of trouble - the paper. Moleskine paper is absolutely awful if you use a fountain pen. If feathers...

and it bleeds through something fierce....

Nope, I just cannot use this paper.

Then there the integration with Evernote. It took me a little bit to figure out, but the page above WILL NOT convert to digital in Evernote.

I finally got it to work, partially, on a page on which I used a black rollerball pen and only printed. However, the search feature simply would not work.

My final opinion is that the notebook is not worth the effort or the price. I purchased the 5.5 x 8.25 notebook for the retail price of $29.95.  With shipping of $5.90 the total was $35.85.

Yes, the notebook comes with 3 months of Evernote Premium Service, but you can get that for $5 per month and I have never seen the need, the free service does everything I need it to do.

So, save your money and buy a notebook with better paper, or buy a Moleskine and use the $12 that you save on something else.