Clipbook by Filofax

Filofax recently introduced the Clipbook A5 notebooks in UK only initially. Filofax kindly sent me a few to try out and to review and give a way.

These notebooks are available in a variety of cover colours and two cover styles. All of them are A5 page size and they have 25mm rings with ring spacing that is compatible with Filofax A5 personal organisers.

You might be thinking I don't need another A5, well may be not, but think of the possible uses of something that take Filofax A5 paper that can be as slim or as fat as you want with the exception of the rings of course. An organiser which is only just a little bit bigger than a sheet of A5 paper. And at a very low price with a range of inserts in it.

I think Filofax have aimed this product at people that might not already be Filofax owners/users.

In their words you can 'gift it' to someone you know and love.

The cover is very plain, no pockets, but you could use a pocket or zip envelope that clips in to the rings.

The rings link through the cover to hold them in place.

And you can remove the rings completely with a little bit of fiddling, and they go back in just as easily too. You will notice there are no tabs on these rings, some people have commented that this will result in the rings becoming 'gappy' very quickly. Well not quite,  because the rings loop through the cover, you are supposed to pull the two halves of the cover outwards to open the rings.

I have found this works well. By opening them in this way you are placing equal pressure on each pair of rings so the ring mechanism shouldn't become distorted from being opened by pulling them open by just one pair of rings.

I've been messing around with this black one for a quite a few days taking it apart and generally using it and I've not encountered any issues with the ring mechanism at all.

The cover will fold back on itself too, so it can be quite compact in use, taking up less desk space than a conventional A5 Filofax.

The Clipbook comes with a selection of inserts as detailed on the reverse side of the instruction sheet.

A stack of ruled paper, graph paper and plain paper, these are all A5 in size.

Undated year planner pages. At 286mm these are slightly smaller than A4 so they fold in to A5 and allow for the rings.

Undated Monthly planner pages.  Like the year planners these are 286mm, so they fold in to A5 and allow for the rings.

Undated Weekly and task/note pages facing each other. These are A5 size pages.

To do, Check list sheets as well.

Naturally all the pages are A5 size and compatible with your existing A5 Filofax.

Take a quick look at the short video from Filofax.


So what do I think of the Clipbook? Come on Steve be honest in your assessment!

The first thing to strike you when you unpack one will be the chemical smell. Yes I'm not going to make a secret of it, it has been widely mentioned in the comments on Philofaxy and Facebook already, and I'm not going to say 'Oh mine didn't smell'

At first I thought it was the plastic of the cover, but I think it's actually the ink the paper is printed with. What ever it is, it does get better over time. I've left mine in the office and as I spend many hours in there every day/week I would have noticed it if it was still as bad as when I first unpacked it.

I think it's quite a versatile product in terms of what you can use it for and who it might appeal to. I thought about how it would be used by a variety of people.

So without being specific... let's take someone who might be dealing with a handful of projects. Each project has a variety of deadlines. You could use a series of Clipbooks to hold the reports documents, schedules for each project. You can reorder the pages, extract pages to take to meetings etc so easily. You could use different covers for different aspects of one large project and break one large project down in to different Clipbooks.

Or a student at university might have a different Clipbook for each subject they were studying or each module of a much larger course. Smaller in size than a big A4 ring binder, easier to slot in to a bag, light weight too.

The selection of pages they come with would be a good starting point for planning and recording quite a wide range of tasks.

Compared to some non-leather Filofax organisers, this one doesn't feel or look like an 'also-ran' it wouldn't look out of place in a kitchen with your collection of recipes and other useful information in it, with a rolling selection of meal plans. Again it's compact size compared to a US letter size, or A4 ring binder will ensure it is not going to dominate your work top, and the plastic cover will shrug off kitchen spills easily.

How about as a garden organiser, one that you might leave in your potting shed with your hints and tips on planting seeds etc. Although I'm not sure how rust proof the ring mechanism is when subjected to higher than normal humidity.

So overall I think it's a good addition to the Filofax range. It is currently available on the Filofax website and in-store at W.H. Smiths in UK, other countries might follow suit next year.

• Leather-look cover £18 - White, Black, Petrol Blue
• Translucent cover £15 - Purple, Fluro Pink

Would you like to try one of these out? Well I have a few to give away.... leave a comment here on Philofaxy and I will pick out a few people at random by Sunday 18th May 2014 to receive a Clipbook with inserts to try out for themselves.

The usual rules of course... the Judges decision is final, no cash alternative etc etc.

So how would you use a Clipbook?