A notebook is more than just a practical tool. It can be a source of joy, a covetable item that turns an ordinary, everyday task—note-taking, journaling, task-planning, brainstorming, or doodling—into a sublime experience.
Upgrading from a cheap notebook to a high-quality one usually costs just a couple more cents per page (or about $2 to $5 overall), and you’re worth it.
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Feathering
Ink bleeds from the edges of letters rather than creating crisp lines.
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Ghosting
Pen ink is visible on the other side of the paper.
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Bleeding
Ink actually comes through to the other side of the paper, or even the next sheet.
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Tooth or Toothiness
Toothiness refers to the paper’s texture. Generally, toothy paper is great for pencils because charcoal adheres better to paper that isn’t very smooth.
After interviewing experts, researching over 100 notebooks, and writing zealously in 34 of them side by side over several weeks, we have picks in a number of sizes and styles, priced from about $2 to $20. Any of these notebooks will provide an appreciably better writing experience than what you can get from a generic, off-the-shelf-at-Walgreens notebook.
We mention price per page when it’s notable, but our picks average 7¢ per page (at the time of publication). We also mention paper weight or thickness when that spec is important, but most of these high-quality pages are 80 to 90 grams per square meter (gsm); thicker isn’t always better, but all of the paper in our picks felt substantial and satisfying for us to write on. And most of the notebooks we tested had 7 mm lined ruling (close to college rule), but we note the exceptions below.
