Field Notes Review

I'm always on the hunt for good, pocket-sized notebooks. With all the hype surrounding Field Notes, I figured I might as well try some out. I'm not impressed with these notebooks at all. They're perfectly average and don't seem to be made of any special materials.

I paid $10 for 3 of these dot grid notebooks. That price is kind of crazy considering these aren't made of anything special. It's just normal card stock paper for the covers, and cheaper paper on the inside. I've definitely used nicer paper in my Rite in the Rain and Rhodia notebooks. I don't like that the covers are made of card stock paper as they aren't that durable. They would not hold up to daily pocket use at all. I do wish the pages were perforated as well. It would make them much easier to tear out that way. I'll also say that I wish these were a tiny bit smaller. These are 3.5" by 5.5" with 48 pages. The number of pages is perfectly fine for my uses. The paper quality is average. Now that I've tried nicer notebooks, I know that it's not the best out there.

I had never tried dot grid notebooks before, so I didn't really know what to expect. I will say I prefer blank pages a lot more. The dots are way too obvious to me. I'd rather them be a little lighter. I hate lined/grid paper for anything other than school work, because I feel they're too restricting. I don't use my EDC notebooks solely for writing lists/notes, so I prefer to have blank pages to handle whatever I need to jot down. Field Notes come in lined, graph, blank, or dot grid depending on what version you get. 

The bottom line is that I could get much cheaper, no-name notebooks from Walmart that are exactly like these. I can't justify paying about 3 bucks a pop on these notebooks when I can get the same quality in no-name notebooks. You're pretty much paying for the name on the front of these covers. They're not even that aesthetically pleasing. There's really no reason to buy these notebooks at all. These are quite popular in the EDC community, but I can't exactly figure out why. Once something gets popular in this community, people jump on the bandwagon pretty quickly. I'm guessing that's the same case with these. I'd rather buy Rite in the Rain notebooks, since those at least have waterproof paper. I don't recommend wasting your money on these notebooks. They're extremely overhyped. Thanks for looking!