Oxford Touch A5 160 Page Wirebound Hardback Notebook Assorted Colours, Pack of 5 , Multi-Colour

Brill for me

Oxford notebooks and notepads in various sizes and formats have been used since being first introduced to the brand about 2-3 years ago. Most are or were wirebound, mostly at the left edge but a small number were of the 'reporter's pad' type and bound at the top. Other than a limited few, none were casebound aka hardbacks.These "Oxford Touch A5 192 Page Hardback Casebound Notebook Assorted Colours, Pack of 5" (mostly pink in this instance) are casebound and feature the same high quality 'Optik' 90gsm paper as is used throughout their ranges. Oxford's pricing is always modest but not 'cheap' while the inherent quality of the paper is very close to that used by more expensive Continental and Japanese brands of which some examples are several times the price of Oxford's nearest equivalent.There are reasons to use a casebound notebook, and benefits to be gained, rather than one with card or semi-rigid plastic covers. Rigid covers allow improved writing support and offer better protection for the pages within. The written contents can be considered permanent; page removal and filing are not intended secondary functions. They could be used by those writers who prefer to use long-hand manuscripts, decry use of typewriters or computers and the word-processing software that others may use. A writer employed by a magazine publisher routinely used casebound volumes for his monthly articles.The paper surface is exceptionally smooth and very fountain pen friendly. The pages have a wider than standard 3cm margin which make the usable width appear narrow. Given sufficient time to dry as inks vary dramatically in their drying times, the result is not only smudge-free but also inclined not to show any signs of feathering across the surface or bleeding from one surface through to the other. Consequently, legibility is always high and allows both sides of the paper to be used and later read. The slightly higher weight of the paper (relative to the more common 80gsm) may help in this respect but it is also the structure of the paper.Although casebound, the books open easily and the pages mostly lie flat although the open ones may slightly arc upwards. Again, the additional weight of the paper helps maintain flatness.

I found these to be a real bargain for the price!While you are unable to pick and choose which colours you would like the actual quality of the notebooks is delightful! Solid and weighty to the touch they are bright, shiny and new to look at so make you feel good already!Combining good qualityhardboard covers with well-made blue springs these notebooks are ideal for students or anyone whose writing books need to 'take a bit of a bashing'. They open easily and provide a nice, firm, flat writing base to write upon. They do not get bent in time nor do used pages curl up and start to clog up the wire spines like many other similar notebooks do.The paper itself has a smooth, silky feel to it and is effortless to write on. It may not possibly be quite so good for fountain pen use because of its silkiness but as I do not use a fountain pen that is only a guess. For all biro or pencil users, however, these are ace and the pages hold into position well and do not 'move about' like they can do on cheaper wire spined products.The pages themselves are of decent thickness and a nice, clear white without being too overpoweringly 'clean' looking. I am not 'techie' so I cannot explain the other symbols on each page that I presume are for use with mobile phones (I do not use a mobile) but that info you can gain in the product description here.Overall, I am delighted with these notebooks and will definitely buy them again as and when I need them.Just to clear up any confusion regarding the amount of pages. I counted 80 sheets per book making 160 SIDES of paper rather than pages - depending on how you interpret the word 'page'. Me being old school I would normally take 160 pages to mean 160 sheets of paper... Whatever, these are great value and great quality and I thoroughly recommend you buy them!

Firstly, and nothing to do with the product. The Amazon tracking & delivery note said "product handed to customer. The product was in fact, left on the front doorstep in full view of the world passing by.The product. The hard back notebooks are neat and feel quite sturdy. The book are approximately 2.25cm wider than a sheet of A4 paper due to the binding ring and the sheets being perforated.

...but you can't make him revise. Unless, that is, you find a different way to make it a bit more fun.Our son is not a fan of homework or revision, much like me at the same age. But he does have ambition and we needed to find a way to make things work if he's to achieve it. Half the battle is getting him to take decent notes in the first place, the other half is him having things easily accessible forever after without needing to carry a separate notebook for each subject in his already full-to-bursting schoolbag.So we got him these notebooks. The key thing here is that there is a companion app, and once he's done with a page he just scans it into the app, where he can sort it according to subject. It means he now has halfway useful notes to look back on at the end of the year, and never has to fear an errant drink, yogurt, wet rugby sock (or whatever other items you might risk finding) destroying his hard work.There's a level of gamification that seems to work well here, and it means that I have greater peace of mind from buying these as required. Mostly, my secondary objective is achieved, because studies show writing things out longhand is a much better way of making the information log in your brain than either listening to audio or typing the same information.As for the notebooks themselves, they're the quality I expect from this brand and are fine used with a fountain pen, without ink bleeding through to the page beyond. Well worth the money to keep our son engaged and better prepared at the end of the academic year.