Notebook Review: Profolio Oasis Notebook

I was wandering around my local art supply shop recently and stumbled across the Profolio Oasis Notebook. It must have been kismet but the same week, several reviews popped up about the new Profolio Oasis Summit notebook. This Oasis is the simpler, cheaper cousin of the Summit.

I grabbed the standard A5 size with a blue/teal cover. I can’t remember but it may have been the only one they had left. Never fear, our friends over at Pen Boutique have it in stock and the color is called Wintergreen ($9.99).

The Oasis Notebook is a fairly common cardstock cover style notebook with paper tape on the spine. It has  sewn signatures hidden under the tape so when the book is open the pages lay flat.

Inside the paper features an unusual multi-divided line-dot-grid-Seyes structure. Unless your paper preference is blank, this paper pretty much has it all. The dark lines are 7mm and the dotted lines are one-third of that — so, every 2.33mm. The vertical ticks are also every 7mm.

The paper is on the ivory side making it very challenging to photograph. (My camera kept trying to make it more peachy or whiter than it was.) The color is a warm ivory like the inside color of a fresh croissant.

The paper is smooth and great for all pen types I tried. It wasn’t glassy. I often think Clairefontaine can feel a little glassy — like too slick. The Oasis paper was just smooth. It’s weird. To my hands, the Oasis paper feels slicker but to my pens there’s a bit more bite. It’s very enjoyable to write on this paper.

This is a view of the reverse of my test writing page and a full view of the page with the top margin (place for date and description) and notation ticks at the top and bottom of the page for center and quarters (dots) and eighths (ticks).

This is a reasonably priced notebook with good paper — really good paper — that would fit into many covers that would be perfect for journaling, bullet journaling or work notes. If I were to make a new top 5 notebooks list, this would probably be on it.