Hello, everyone, I really hope you’re doing well so today, I’m doing a comparison between the Dingbats earth collection and the pro collection. I just recently published a video on the pro collection and reviewed the earth collection. Quite a while back. I’m gonna link both videos in the description below in case. You want to check them out where you can see more details about both of those notebooks all right.
So let’s do the review. The main key differences are, in my opinion, the paper they use and the features that they have and I will show you more in a little bit, but let’s first look at the size. This is an a5 the earth collection versus a b5, and I’m going to line those up. So you can see the difference right here. So the pro collection is slightly larger.
There’S a spine, and just also it looks like a wee bit thicker as well, and then the earth collection uses a vegan leatherette cover, of course, is the pro collection has a linen cover. So this is a rougher cover. It feels more rough and this one has texture too, but it feels softer to the touch if that makes any sense and then both have a pen loop right there, as you can see, and they both have two bookmarks, the two-tone here and then two-tone here as Well, let’s look at the back real, quick, mostly dingbats, in the back, both have an elastic strap and this one’s available in several different colors and this one’s available, this one’s the cactus one and then there’s also one with a little b in the front. But i think it’s only available in this color, which is like a dark navy or black blue I’d, say so yeah all right. So this one has 185 pages that are numbered, and then this one has little check this.
One has 128 pages, so this one has less pages, and that is because the paper is a lot thicker. This one uses 100 gsm paper and then this one uses 160 gsm paper. So it’s much thicker paper in this one and they are both a dot grid, notebook and, as you can see, the main difference with the paper, this one’s cream colored and this one’s just the plain white, I’m gonna bring this closer to the camera. So you can really see this in person, but in more detail up close and personal there we go and paper feels a lot different. This paper feels coated, it is super smooth and then this paper has a matte finish to it.
It does not feel as smooth, would I wouldn’t say it has much tooth to it. It’s not like it’s rough or anything, but it’s just a matte finish, so it doesn’t quite have that slick feel than this one and, of course this one is a lot thinner and then this one’s quite a bit thicker and sturdier. When you turn the page and when you open them up, let’s compare them side by side. So here is some information on the Serengeti here. As I said, information on like the species of the Serengeti, which I don’t know how many people really would like to have this – you know on the cover page of their notebook.
I like this a lot better. It looks just prettier in my opinion, and then you go into the page here where you can put the information where it’s right there and they open it up where this just has one blank page here and then go straight into the notebook. And then this one has a how-to guide right here: how to use this more as a type of bullet journal. There’S a bunch of features in this one. We have a tab key here and then a color key.
You can make for how to mark your to-do’s, and then it has index pages. Like yes, three pages here and then it says up here future log, and so it is four pages of future log, and then you can also. This has little indentations here, so you can split the page easily in thirds right here as well, and as I said, this one is numbered. This one does not have any of these features, and then also here you can see once you get into the actual notebook. You can mark the pages right here and create another index that you can see easily.
You can create different sections in the notebook and then in the back here you have a pocket in both. So, as I said, this notebook does not have any of these features, which is slightly confusing to me, because, because they call this, the pro collection and this one is the earth collection. Even though this one has all the features of a professional notebook that you would like to use in like a work type of setting office setting or you need to organize your notes much better, I wonder if the pro name refers to maybe being a professional artist. Since the paper is thicker and you can use all kinds of watercolors and mixed media on it and acrylic whatever you know, crayons, probably whatever you want to use. This paper can probably handle this a lot better.
Since it’s 160 gsm and this one’s only 100 gsm, so but I find the names a little confusing because for me, pro, infers professional as in work related, not artist, related, so yeah. Let me look at the writing samples, real quick. I think this just was an accident outside, and this is the fifth time I’m starting this video. So I don’t know if you heard this sounded like a fender bender, I’m not gonna start over. So let’s get to the writing sample.
Let me see this one’s back here, as you can see both performed really well. I yeah used the same pens for both of them and two fountain pens, so it’s definitely fair in terms of a comparison. So neither one has any feathering here performed really well with fountain pens and then let’s turn it over. I have here yeah the back as you can see, there’s a little bit more ghosting with 100 gsm and the paper looks like it just wants to bleed through, but not quite yet. They’re, both definitely fountain pen friendly.
But then, with this paper, you have barely any ghosting at all and absolutely no bleed through no nothing. So if ghosting is something that bothers you, I would definitely go with the thicker paper, where i just prefer the feel of the thinner paper a little better. I, like that slick, feel yeah, but both are definitely fountain pen friendly just to have more ghosting there, but it also, as I said, the thinner one handled excuse the honking again handle it really well, I said it’s my fifth time doing this video, I’m not starting Over excuse all the honking yeah, so this was my comparison, as I said: they’re both great notebooks. If you need extra features for organizing your notes, probably better off this one. Also, if you like a smaller size and then this one’s great for just artistic type of projects that you want to do when you want to get more creative and you need thicker paper that can handle things like watercolor you’re, definitely better off with this one or Just want a larger notebook, so those are my two cents.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment if you’ve enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and for more notebook videos, subscribe to my channel. Thank you so much for watching!
