Logical Swing Notebook Review

You may already know that I’m a big fan of the Logical Prime notebook. This notebook, the Logical Swing, is made by Nakabayashi, the same company who makes the Logical Prime. I’m excited to try it out and see if it’s a less-expensive alternative to the Logical Prime.

First Impressions

On first glance, this notebook seems to be intended for student use, or at least casual use. It doesn’t have the same high-quality feel that the Logical Prime does. The cover card stock is thinner and has more graphics on it, giving it a cheaper feel. Indeed, it is less expensive than the Logical Prime, so I guess this makes sense. It also doesn’t have any extras like page numbers or marker ribbons. The paper is nice and smooth and thinner than many popular notebooks.

The cover isn’t too exciting.

The Details

Let’s take a look at some details for the Logical Swing notebook

• Pages: 60 (30 sheets)
• Paper Weight: 70gsm
• Binding: Stitch
• Page Style: Proprietary Line/Dot/Grid (6mm and 7mm)
• Size: A5, B5

Ink-handling characteristics (A table with the following properties can be found at the bottom of this post)

• Sheen: Very Low
• Shading: Average
• Bleeding: Average
• Ghosting: Average
• Feathering: Very Low
• Dry Time: Average

Other features

• Cloth-like tape-bound spine
• Multiple cover color options
• FSC Certified

This sticker gives some info about the notebook.

Actual Use

As I mentioned above, this is a bare-bones notebook with no special extras. I imagine it would mainly be used by students or for taking notes or jotting down thoughts. It probably won’t be your next bullet journal. Still, notebooks like this exist for a reason and many people will find them to be useful.

This notebook consists of one signature, which means it has a hard time opening and laying flat. Even after pressing hard when I had it open, it kept falling closed if I was near the beginning or end of the notebook. I appreciate the stitch binding, which will add durability, but for a notebook with this few pages a glue binding may have helped it to lay flat more easily.

A single signature means this notebook has a hard time laying flat.

Once open, writing on the paper is quite nice. It is very smooth and offers little to no feedback. It’s almost too smooth for my personal preference, but I know many people will love how it feels. I do like the proprietary page layout (it’s similar to the Profolio Oasis if you’ve ever used that notebook). While it may not be my first choice in page layouts, I don’t mind it and think it can be quite useful.

Here’s a look at the page layout and top margin

The inside cover includes instructions on how to use the page layout

The paper may be nice and smooth, but its performance is lacking. It handles fountain ink pretty well, but does show a bit of feathering and bleedthrough. It also won’t do much to make your inks look as good as they can. It shows almost no sheen and only average shading. That’s fine if dry times are low, but they’re only average. As for ghosting, using both sides of a sheet wouldn’t be too bad, but it’s kind of spoiled by slight bleedthrough from the other side of the page.

Writing Sample – Front

Writing Sample – Back

Conclusion

I purchased this notebook hoping it would live up to the standard set by the Logical Prime notebooks. Unfortunately, it falls short. I know that this is a less-expensive alternative, so I shouldn’t expect the same quality as Logical Prime, but I don’t think I would ever use this notebook. It’s not that it is horrible. In fact, it handles fountain pen ink fairly well. It also has a low cost-per-sheet, which is great. It’s just that there are so many other notebooks that cost the same and have better performance that I would rather use than this one. Still, if you’re in the market for an inexpensive notebook for taking notes, the Logical Swing might be a good choice for you.

If you’d like a bit more information about how I test papers and notebooks, I wrote an article about my paper rating system.