TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to today's video. Today I am reviewing two notebooks from the brand LeStallion. That's why I'm saying it at least - and these are a company based here in Australia, primarily sold through the US, and they're really nice quality and really affordable notebooks.
So I have two here: I'm going to show you one, and then I've done a writing sample in the other papers. The same are both aligned. The packages have come to a little bit, sort of banged up in the mail, but that's okay. It's because the notebooks are well protected by this and are in, you know, when I got them, we're in really good nick. They have been used a little bit, and sort of, you know, obviously looked at and stuff, but they come in this nice sort of archival sort of box, and they kind of look like this. It's kind of vaguely A5 size and has this sort of faux leather cover.
I'm going to talk about some parts and features and then show you the writing sample. So I want to talk through the parts of features. First, as I said, It's roughly A5; it's 202 by 148 millimeters, so It's just a little bit shorter than A5, and it has this faux leather cover. It comes in four colors. This one is the Ashgray black. It also comes in Cocoa brown, which is a nice darker brown, Khaki cream, which is a sort of a nice sort of cream color, and this one, which is the desert brown, which is a sort of slightly lighter sort of more caramel brown. The pages have this sort of brown edging on them, the corners are nicely rounded, and the paper on the inside is 120 gsm, lined ivory wood-free paper.
The line rule is sort of like this really interesting sort of dashed line rule. I'll bring it up nicely and close. So you can have a sort of good look at it. You can see It's sort of dashed. It does not sort of solid lines. It's a nice sort of mid-gray, sort of dark gray line, and is about 7mm rule. So It's a nice size, and I said, you know, numbered pages and all of that kind of stuff. There are 216 pages, 211 are numbered, and there are some index pages here at the front four of those as well. It comes with a couple of little cards with a little bit of information about that kind of stuff. Then, like your goals, at LeStallion, we believe that goals can be achieved with a simple act of writing them down and giving you some steps for that. And then, like a little three-month plan and six-month plan section, there is really nice simple stuff going on here, but really good.
It's got a ribbon bookmark with what they call a charm on it. It is a fairly simple metal end there, but it gives a nice sort of a place for them, you know, the ribbon to be held and all that kind of thing, a bit of weight on it. The archival box, I think is great. As a way of both storing the notebook and archiving them, but also protecting them, as I said, the notebooks came in really great condition within the post, even though the boxes have been slightly banged up. So if it hadn't been in that box, the notebook would have been the thing beaten up.
Another feature is, of course, a back pocket. A lot of these notebooks have expandable back pockets there for your extra papers and all those kinds of things now. LeStallion has been around for about three years and mainly on amazon. It is designed, as they said it is designed for those striving towards success to have a notebook. They would be proud to carry professional and good-looking, so they've been thought out.
It is simple, lay flat.
Binding... once It's sort of you sort of like break the break, the binding in it does sit nicely. It's this sort of sewn glued binding, and because it doesn't have that sort of hard spine, it can lay fairly flat, Which is a really nice feature? These are just really simple, elegant notebooks that look great nice sort of simple embossing there on the front there of the stallion logo and then LeStallion on the back. They're great. As I said, you know, sort of a Sydney-based company, but mainly sold through Amazon in the US.
Let's now look at the paper. As I said, this is 120 gsm lined paper. It is ivory paper, and just to show that, it is sort of ivory. This is the archer and olive white, which is quite white, so you can see It's. It's not white paper at all. It is very sort of ivory, but it's a nice paper, It's smooth, but It's not waxy, smooth, or coated smooth. It's got a little bit of tooth. Just so you know you're writing on, It's got some very pleasant feedback.
I would say now: I've done some writing tests here, so I've used Van Diemen's Cradle mountain ink. You know, extra fine, twisty, Ligonier diamine, oxford blue in an Esther brook Camden, medium nib, Robert Osterjag In a twist. Eco broad Lamy, black in a Lami Safari 1.5. I've used Baystate blue there and a Jin Hao fine, then I've got a Lami rollable, a pilot G2 gel pen, a ballpoint, a highlighter palomino Blackwing, which I've erased, which he raises fairly well with minimal effort, a sharpie. Then I took Robert Oster's tranquility, and I hit it with the water brush pens to see sort of what would happen and then put down a swab of a California teal. Just to see what like two things.
If there's sheen, and if on this paper, like if It's a property that the paper promotes, but also how it deals with large quantities of ink now, if we look up nice and close here, what we see is we see that the writing is held really nicely together. 
There's no feathering on this paper; there's a little bit of shading in the colors. Don't look super vibrant! It's because it's not coated paper. It does absorb into the paper just a little bit, but we see like this nice sort of, you know, tightness of line. The highlighter did well were the brush pen hit the tranquility ink. We see that it sort of has moved around a lot. So you know, it sort of absorbs. We can make out what was written underneath, but it does move around quite a lot on there, and then, where they put the swab done is a little bit of feathering on that. Where we put down a lot of ink, and you do get a hit of the red sheen, I'm not sure if it's gonna come up on the camera. But if we look at the reverse of this page, what comes through is where we put the water.
The swab and the sharpie and then a couple of dots from bay state blue, but nothing else, and there's also very little ghosting. I actually think this poem this paper performs really, really well; it's quite impressive. Actually so, if you're after a notebook that uses a sort of ivory-colored paper, not super waxy smooth but performs well with fountain pens and consistency consistently and reliably like this was written with oxford, blue, and nothing. You can barely see it through. On the other side, It's really, really great and to have over 200 numbered pages in a notebook with this quality is amazing.
But what's great is its price point, so this sits on amazon at 21.95 US dollars. It's only available through the US at that price at the moment, so things like shipping and conversion stuff like that are going to be that price up, of course, but there is a, but at that price point, I think this is a really interesting notebook like big Pros for it are things like the simple presentation. I think it's a really nicely presented notebook. As I said, you know something that a professional would have no problem carrying into a meeting.
You know you'd be able to use it as a journal for a long period of time. It's got good quality. Faux leather cover. That's going to last forever. Nice texture, nice texture.
It's got some nice sort of design elements. It's simple! It's refined. It's elegant and, as I said, at a really reasonable price point. So if you want to check out what I've written there, they've got their website lestalion.com you find them on amazon and things like that, you know to check them out, because these are really really nice.
Is that the four color options are fairly sort of neutral but really nice, and the paper quality, I think, performs at a really good level. So if you're a fountain pen user - and you want a paper - that's slightly toothy - think Midori baron fig, probably slightly smoother than the baron fig paper. But if you think of papers like Midori, that's the kind of performance you're going to get from this paper. So big thank you to LeStallion for sending these out for review. They are also going to be featured in a couple of other videos coming up because I think these are worth looking at, particularly this price one and the fact that they are of a company based in Australia.
The books are not made in Australia. I should point that out they are made in china, but they are designed and sort of sold by an Australian company, who have put all the thought into sort of what it is and how it performs so big. Thank you to them once again, and thank you, my audience, for watching. I hope you found this video interesting and useful if you did, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to all that kind of stuff. If there's why you would like to support my channel by sponsoring a review or providing an item for review, I would love to hear from you in the meantime: enjoy your notebooks, check out LeStallion I'll put a link down below, and I'll talk to you soon.
