Samsill is another brand I’d not heard of until browsing around on Amazon. The company is an independent manufacturer of business accessories such as ring binders and laptop cases, founded in Texas in 1953, and now making their products in partnership with manufacturers in China and Mexico, while still maintaining headquarters and some manufacturing facilities in Texas. Their company history is actually quite fascinating.

I didn’t know all that background about the company before I ordered, but from what I could see online, this notebook seemed worth a try: 3.5 x 5.5″ format, red cover with stitched edge, and at 240 pages, it has a sort of thicker look without too much overhang. Shown with a pocket size Moleskine for comparison below.

When my order arrived, I thought the notebook looked pretty good– everything noted above was true to the description. The bright red cover feels nice and substantial. The wide elastic band seems sturdy, and it’s tight enough to sit neatly on the back cover without flopping around when you aren’t using it. But then the dream started to die…

First I noticed the headbands– I prefer not to have these at all, since they are almost always decorative and don’t add any strength to the binding. To me it just looks stupid to have a little string glued on there, and on the Samsill notebook, it looks particularly bad as they are rather frayed.

I also noticed that the elastic closure is attached in an unusual way– it goes all the way over the top and bottom of the cover and is stitched on, and presumably glued under the back cover. Maybe this is stronger than the way most elastics are attached through holes in the back cover, but it seemed like it might cause the stitching to come loose over time. There is no pocket in the back.

This is how the back cover looks when the elastic is wrapped around the front of the notebook:

When you aren’t using the elastic to hold the notebook closed, it looks like this on the back:

It’s when you open the notebook that the disappointment increases.  The binding is really stiff, and there is an extra piece of cardboard under the endpapers that makes it feel like you’ll break the binding if you open it all the way. Once you’ve crushed it open and flexed the spine a bit, the notebook does open fairly flat, but it offers a lot of resistance against staying open, and after you’ve opened it, it won’t stay closed all the way without using the elastic.

The cool white paper has relatively dark lines that do not go all the way across the page, and there is a wider header space at the top. I wish I could say that the paper made up for this notebook’s other faults, but alas, it did not. Fountain pens, and many others, were feathery messes. There was slightly more than average bleed-through. Show-through was about average. My favorite gel ink Uniball Signo RT 0.38 pen felt great as the paper is quite smooth, so if you only use this or a Pilot G-2, you’d be fine.

I was shocked to see that the black pocket size version of this notebook currently costs $21.50 on Amazon! Amazon often has some weird price fluctuations, but that is pretty shocking, given that the red pocket version is only $8.42. (I paid $8.95 when I ordered mine, about a year ago.) Blue and green are also available, as are larger sizes– strangely, a 7.5 x 10″ black notebook is only $5.56 right now! A dot grid version is available, though currently only in a medium size. But honestly, I can’t really recommend that you buy this notebook unless you plan to just hold it in your hands and never open it. One other possibility could be to cut out the paper and use the cover to bind some other paper– I am seriously considering trying this to see if the binding can be made more flexible.

After learning about the history of the company, I really wanted to like the Samsill notebook more– I’m always happy when I find an American stationery company that hasn’t been swallowed up in corporate mergers. Journals don’t seem to be a major part of their product line, but it would be nice if Samsill tweaked their notebook design a bit to improve the quality while maintaining the mostly attractive and sturdy exterior.