hands down best note book i've ever used

Very nice notebook. The back cover is very sturdy so you can write well standing. Paper is nice to write on with pencil and doesn't bleed through with pen. The table of contents pages are nice for help locating information if you tend to just "stream" meetings and information in the same notebook.

Hard backing and excellent binding. This is necessary as I walk around getting measurements.

This is the closest thing I've found to the perfect notebook, and I've tried a ridiculous number of other ones. I'm a actuarial student (candidate? whatever -- I'm taking exams), so I write a lot of notes (A LOT).

My top two notebooks are this and the Miquelrius 4-subject hard cover spiral notebook with 5mm grids. This review is going to primarily be a comparison of the two.

The Vela has much better grid-line weight, color, and accuracy. The Miquelrius uses really dark lines that compete with my pen, so it's not as easy to read what's been written. The line spacing seems to be off a bit, too -- they're not always where my ruler thinks they should be. The Vela lines are spot-on, and they're totally unobtrusive.

The Miquelrius has a better paper finish. It's super smooth (I use 0.28mm Uni-ball Signo RT1 pens; smooth finish is important with such a fine tip). The Vela is far from bad, and I probably would think it was amazing were it not for the Miquelrius.

The Vela uses double wire binding, so it's a good bit sturdier than the M's single spiral. It would be nice if the Vela had perforated and punched pages like the M, but I think it's intended to be a Notebook of Permanent Record (with numbered pages and an index), so tearing out pages wouldn't really be in line with its purpose.

So yeah, if I could have the Vela with the Miquelrius paper, I'd never buy another notebook. I mean, I'd buy a s***-ton of those notebooks, not that I'd... anyway. Buy this notebook.

It looks great. Simple and not cheap, but the notebook is not sturdy enough. I wanted hard cover, but it's somewhat soft. The front cover did not have sticker on, so I was glad, but it looks like somebody dropped my notebook. One corner is mushed. I haven't tried writing, so I don't know how heavy the paper feels like, but honestly, it's hard to say the notebook has 144 pages. Page number ends at 136. Possibly, 144 is including index and other extra pages here and there. Plus... I thought 144 meant 144 papers. I didn't know they meant it was front and back 144 pgs. Could be my fault, but I wonder how other notebooks are.