William Hannah A6 Notebook/Planner - New Product Review

Last weekend saw the on-line launch event of the William Hannah A6 leather notebook/planner on the Facebook group using a live video feed.

David kindly offered to send me a sample to review, which I gladly accepted and it arrived in the post this last week.

The William Hannah A6 leather notebook was delivered in exactly the same style of gift box as the A5 (previously reviewed), the A6 box is shown here with a Philofaxy business card for size.

It opens in the same way as the A5 gift box to reveal the wrapped A6 leather notebook.

I have to say that the packaging and 'opening experience' (if such a thing exists!) is comparable to opening any Apple product with the detail that has gone in to the packaging and the presentation of the product.

If you wanted to give one of these notebooks as a gift, the recipient would be very impressed opening their gift.

Inside was a Bordeaux and Petrol Blue William Hannah A6 leather notebook.

It is nice to break out of my usual comfort zone of colours! See the website for all the colour combinations available.

The A6 notebook uses the same size 20 mm stainless steel discs as the A5 with the same spacing as well. There are just 6 discs fitted on the A6 compared to the 8 fitted in the A5. So all existing paper punches will work.

The stainless steel discs are finished to a high standard and the pages turn very smoothly.

Here are the two sizes together for comparison.

The William Hannah A6 notebook cover is made out of high quality Italian leather and the stitching is done to a high standard too.

Of course if you already own an A5 William Hannah notebook you can pop A6 pages in to the A5 without any problems because the discs are spaced the same distance apart.

I have experimented with putting A5 in to the A6, but that is still a 'work in progress' project !

Another comparison with the William Hannah A6 I did was to compare it with two slightly different size Van der Spek A6 ring bound organisers. 

In the left hand column of the photograph below there is a Van der Spek Senior with 20 mm rings, this is the same size as the discs in the William Hannah, so as you can see they are very close in size. 

The Van der Spek is designed for paper 95mm x 140mm so slightly smaller than A6, A6 pages work in that Van der Spek if you use top tabs on dividers. Where as the William Hannah has a more compact arrangement with its disc system and normal A6 paper. 

The right hand column is another Van der Spek Senior, but this time fitted with 25mm size rings and it is the full size suitable for A6 size paper. As you can see it is noticeably wider than the William Hannah A6 notebook, and thicker too. 

The William Hannah A6 is quite a compact A6, if that makes sense! It measures 160mm high by 125mm wide. The 20mm Van der Spek Senior measures 176mm high by 145mm including the clasp. 

The discs are threaded on to a stainless steel rod which is sewn in to the back of the leather cover in the same way as the ones are in the A5 model.

This gives the notebook very good rigidity and stability which is normally an issue for disc system binders.

With sufficient overhang and the quality of the Italian leather cover, this will protect the paper very well and your pages will not come to any harm in normal daily use.

There are a full set of A6 inserts available for the new model. They include diary pages as well as a variety of lined, dot grid, grid, to-do lists etc.

The paper is of very high quality and takes fountain pen ink without any issues at all. See the website for full details for all the inserts available.

There are also a small selection of accessories available for the A6 including colourful dividers and a matching leather and elastic pen loop, the pen loop fits in the same way as it does on the A5 model. I have already ordered a pen loop and some dividers for the A6!.

The William Hannah A6 Notebook is available in ten colour combinations 'off-the-shelf' these have been chosen to appeal to the majority of peoples tastes.

In addition, like the A5 you can order an A6 notebook in a number of bespoke colour combinations of exterior leather, interior suede and the colour of the thread both inside and outside.

You can also have your notebook cover monogrammed as well.

For current prices and availability of both sizes of William Hannah Notebooks and accessories please see their website.

Overall I am very impressed with the William Hannah A6 notebook, it satisfies many points for me, being flexible and compact as well as high quality and able to tuck in to a small bag without taking up too much space. I have always liked the proportions of A6 page size so it will be great to use it again as a notebook.

Thank you to David Round at William Hannah Leather Notebooks for providing me with the review sample.

Further Information:

• William Hannah Website
• William Hannah Users Facebook Group