Review: Kolo Essex Travel Book

The Kolo Essex Travel Book is an interesting hybrid of a Moleskine-type notebook and a Filofax. From the outside, it looks a lot like a Moleskine, but with some important differences.

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The binding is cloth, with a window in which you can insert your own image.

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An elastic band holds it shut. On the back, the Kolo logo is in the usual spot, but it’s a little cloth patch rather than embossed.

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When you look at the spine, you start to see some differences– it’s a separate piece from the front and back cover, and around it are wrapped the thin elastic bands that hold the notebook components into the interior.
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Inside is where it starts to look like a Filofax. Off the shelf, the Essex comes with a lined notebook insert and a photo album insert, and 2 elastic bands to hold them in. I bought an additional graph paper insert plus a set of extra elastic bands. Kolo also offers blank, address book and planner inserts, and photo inserts in black (mine came in ivory).
I love that you can mix and match what you put inside the notebook, and holding them in with elastics makes it easy to add other non-Kolo inserts if you want. I tried inserting a Field Notes notebook and though it’s a bit bigger than the Kolo booklets, it still works fine.

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It’s a very flexible system, similar to the Midori Traveler’s Notebook. My only beef with it is how the elastics are exposed on the outside spine of the binder– I always worry that things like this could snag on other items in your bag, perhaps snapping the elastic. It would be interesting to design a binder in which the elastics were somehow covered.

The binder is thick enough to hold the photo insert and 2 notebooks. It doesn’t close to a totally square shape, but probably would if I had some photos in there.

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The inside back cover has a small pocket where you can tuck papers, but it’s quite tight and not much would fit in– an accordion pocket would be preferable.

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The photo insert also has a little window that you can fill with your own image, which then seals shut with a self-stick strip.

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The notebooks inside will flop back and forth a bit when it’s open, but you can open them completely flat, and even bend the cover fully back if you want.

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The booklets are similar to Field Notes or Moleskine cahiers, though slightly smaller. Other key differences: cute contrasting color stitching down the spine and squared corners. The booklets are 48 pages each.

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I’m happy to say that the paper in the Kolo inserts is very nice. The graph paper has a fine grid very similar to that found in Piccadilly and Moleskine notebooks. The paper is a similar off-white color, and it’s nice and smooth. All my usual pens worked quite well on it. I’ve also started testing all my notebooks with a pH pen to see if the paper is acid-free, which the Kolo notebooks are.

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My final verdict? If I was designing this from scratch, I might make a few tweaks to it, but even as it is, the Kolo Essex Travel Book is a really nice product. I love the versatility of it– you can use it like a Filofax with the address, planner and notebook inserts, or you could turn it into a mini photo album, or any combination of the above. The covers are available in several colors, clothbound and leatherbound, and a larger size is also available. The small clothbound binder with photo insert and journal is currently $18.75, and small inserts are around $4.00, all available on Amazon.

5 thoughts on “Review: Kolo Essex Travel Book”

  1. I love this idea. I use a Moleskine and love it, but I’m always looking for something a little closer to perfect! :) Making a notebook that is flexible and open to customization is a great concept!

  2. Update 07-11-2011, over at the supplier’s site, the Essex has been discounted deeply with pricing from $8.00-$12.00 for the basic units in two sizes in cloth or leather. This is down from the list prices of $25-$50. The basic unit comes with one photo insert and one scrapbook insert. Each will accommodate two additional inserts, avaialble on the same site.

    http://kolo.com/shop/albums/?pl=50

    david boise ID

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