Moleskine large cahier review

I bought a fabulous Stamford Traveller's Journal (see here for my review) and wanted to try various other booklets that would be a close match in size, just to see what would be other potential options. I have already reviewed the Midori 013 insert (see here); today it's the turn of the Moleskine cahiers.

Size-wise, the Moleskine large cahiers, at 13cm x 21 cm are only a smidgen different from the notebooks in the Stamford TJ (12.5cm x 21cm) and so at first glance would be a natural possible alternative, especially as a three-pack can be obtained for about £6.20, making each notebook just over £2.

I bought both the squared and lined cahiers and in grey covers as the best colour to complement the red of the TJ.

As you can see, the three-pack comes with a label wrapped around the cahiers. Inside each three-pack is the usual booklet from Moleskine, outlining the 'history' of the Moleskine (nice idea; shame it's about a different notebook altogether...). I throw these into recycling because they are propaganda, but each to their own.

There are 80 pages in each book, with the last 16 sheets being (32 pages) being removable. The perforations are such that, if you didn't want to remove the pages, they wouldn't easily detach.
The covers are simple grey card, with Moleskine embossed into the card on the back.

Embossed into the back of the cover

There is a slip-pocket in the back cover. The corners are rounded. I note that the books are designed in Italy and manufactured in China.

Squared version:
The squares are 5mm x 5mm, with 41 full squares x 25 full squares per page.

Squared version

Slip-pocket in back cover

Lined version:
There are 31 lines per page with a line-spacing of 6mm. The top margin is 20mm; the bottom 10mm. 31 lines is nice if you want to have a line per day of the month and use them as some kind of diary. I have pretty small writing and so a line spacing of 6mm is no problem for me but for many, this might be a bit tight.

Lined version

Ink tests:
Oh boy.

Squared:

Front

Reverse

Lined:

Front

Reverse

There was feathering, bleed-through and show-through. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. The reverse is utterly unusable with any of my fountain pen and ink combinations. This is thicker paper yet behaves far worse than the Midori 013. If you wanted to use pencil or biro then you'd be okay.

Overall:
Epic fail on the pen test! If you don't use a fountain pen you could use them okay but otherwise...
Nice size, nice idea and if the paper were even marginally better I might consider using these for making my own week + notes diary. If I do, I'll be doing it in pencil and biro though!