Quick preview: The Rhodia Webnotebook

Last week I finally broke down and bought a Rhodia Webnotebook. Tired of dealing with the inconsistency of the Moleskine paper and as always, under the influence of my paper fetish, I found a seller on Ebay who happened to be in Michigan and had free shipping. I swallowed the pill of paying $15 for yet another 3.5x5.5" notebook and waited a whopping 2 days for it to show up.

Obviously when it comes to Rhodia, the people who use their products have come to expect a certain level of quality. I didn’t even bother reading reviews of this notebook, I blindly trusted the Rhodia name and assumed it would be good. That’s a spot most manufacturers want to be in but it’s also a dangerous one. If you put out a bunch of good products then follow up with a flaky one, you’ll never live it down. It would seem that there’s more disappointment to be had in the 3.5x5.5" range than there is joy but as you’d expect, Rhodia doesn’t drop the ball here.

I don’t want to give too much away because I’d like to do a full review, but I’ll comment briefly on the paper. Because I didn’t read any of the reviews, I missed the fact that they didn’t use their normal bright white lined paper for this notebook. When I cracked it open, I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice cream colored paper with light grey lines and a Rhodia logo at the bottom of every page. IMO, if you’re shooting for the Moleskine, you must have cream colored paper and thus I was quite happy to find that Rhodia already knew this fact.

The rest of my thoughts shall be saved for an upcoming review but I’ll leave you with this. If you’re tired of spending $10 on a Moleskine only to play Russian Roulette with the paper quality, spending an extra $5 for the Rhodia will end that pain forever.

Watch for a full review soon!