Baron Fig started as a Kickstarter project and raised almost $170k of crowd funding. Clearly people liked this notebook so I wanted to see what it is all about. Currently Baron Fig only makes one notebook, The Confidant, which comes with 192 pages of blank, ruled or dot grip paper. The book is a bit smaller than an A5 size at 5.4″ x 7″.
The notebook comes very nicely packaged in its own maroon colored box and while I like the packaging I don’t want to see that on a $16 notebook…it actually annoys me…why does a hard covered notebook need an expensive box? Can I pay $10 and skip the box?
Okay so I dislike the packaging but what about the notebook?
The plain, unbranded grey cover and the yellow page marker go great together. The inside of the notebook contains a thick acid free paper that handles fountain pen ink quite well and as advertized the book does lay flat, which was nice to see.
Unfortunately the build quality leaves much to be desired.
The first thing I noticed was the page marker is unfinished at the bottom so it comes new out of the box frayed. That seems a bit sloppy. The spine looks all bumpy, like the fabric wasn’t glued on with much care.
With some use I noticed that the cover would no longer close all the way on its own weight. This isn’t a huge deal but it’s worth pointing out.
The book’s binding has a decent number of signatures which allows the book to lay flat but on the inside the stitching in each signature is poor.
There are only 5 loose stitches and they are off center; from the top of the page to the first stitch is .75″ and from the bottom of the page to the last stitch is 1.25″. If you are like me and like to tear pages out of your notebook, you are going to have a hard time. Every page I have tried to pull rips horribly because of the crap stitching.
For reference this is what stitching on a high quality Life notebook looks like:
The Baron Fig has some really good things going for it but the build quality makes it feel like a first attempt, and when you consider the $16 price tag it’s definitely a no-go.
Please note: This product was provided to me at no charge by Baron Fig for review purposes.
Agree with you 100%. I like the box, but it’s an unneeded luxury. The cover begins a mild warp immediately after unboxing–it needs a strong elastic cord. Also, stitches are sparse, and pages are beginning to rip after 2 weeks of moderate use.
Hi Ron, thank you for your comment! I am sorry to hear that your experience with Baron Fig has been similar to mine. The concept of their product is quite good so I hope they will be able to improve their quality.