Introduction.
MeePlus is a relatively new company that was established in 2023 by a husband and wife team based in Hong Kong. Toby and Lora noticed the return to paper planners by a large number of people on social media.
Having previously worked in the leather goods industry, they turned their experience to good use to start making their own products.
They contacted me a few weeks ago to see if I would be interested in reviewing some of their products, naturally I agreed to their offer.
I requested a couple of samples of their A5 Slimpad range and they sent me one with 11mm rings and the other with 16mm rings.
They also have other sizes in their range including:
- Mini 11mm
- Pocket 11mm, 13mm
- Personal 11mm 16mm
- A5 11mm, 16mm
And in a range of colours and leather finishes.
The leather is a vegetable tanned leather sourced from the Badalassi Carlo tannery in Italy. The leather on the finished items I received measured approximately 1.85mm in thickness.
They also sell a range of inserts in normal thickness paper and thin Tomoe River paper. I have included some of both in this review.
You will find all the details of the full range of products and all the accessories on the MeePlus website.
Both planners arrived very well packed in an outer box and sealed plastic wrapper. Both were duty paid which was very welcome so no hidden import costs.
Once unpacked the presentation box was also shrink wrapped. These guys are serious about your planner arriving without any damage.
Each planner was contained in a soft dust bag.
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| Cognac Pueblo Leather A5 with Brass Spine |
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| Tobacco Pueblo Leather A5 with Silver Spine |
The design as you will see is very simple, there are no pockets or pen loops or clasps. You can add accessories to add a pen loop and an elastic clasp.
All organisers/binders are fitted with Krause rings, which of course we know are the best available. Both binders laid completely flat straight out of the box with no training required.
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| A5 11mm gold rings. |
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| A5 16 mm silver rings. |
I know a lot of people have been asking for a Compact A5 organiser like the Filofax Heritage, before they increased the ring size from 16 to 20mm. Well MeePlus have the option for 16mm and even smaller 11mm.
How many pages can they hold? Good question. This table is from the MeePlus website:
I loaded up the 11mm rings with all 100 sheets of the Tomoe River lined paper I had been sent, plus the pen loop/elastic loop card. It all fitted and the pages could be turned.
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| 11mm rings loaded up with 100 sheets of Tomoe River paper. |
I then tried my own home printed A5 Week on Two Pages insert printed on 80 gsm Clairefontaine paper. I could get all 12 months (about 54 pages) on to the rings, but they were quite difficult to turn comfortably.
Not surprising really. The off-set from the edge of the page as to where the holes are punched becomes critical on rings this small.
By contrast the 16mm ring A5, took the whole 12 months of my diary inserts on the same 80gsm paper without any difficulty, with spare capacity for other pages (notes etc).
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| 16mm rings loaded up with about 54 pages of 80gsm paper. |
In-Use.
I put the 16mm ring Slimpad to use as my main organiser. I transferred my full diary insert, my blogging insert (month on one page) and a selection of notes pages and frequently used reference pages to the Slimpad.
The main advantage for me is that I can carry it where ever I go. It slips in to the iPad sleeve in the back of my small messenger bag perfectly, something that my other larger ring A5 organisers can't easily do.
Dimensions.
The 16mm ring MeePlus Slimpad measures 220mm high, 360mm when fully open. Approximately 172mm wide when closed. And approximately 20mm thick at the thickest point when closed.
The 11mm ring MeePlus Slimpad also measures 220mm high, but it is 345mm when fully open. Approximately 169mm wide when closed. It is approximately 18mm thick at the thickest point when closed.
Options.
There is the option of either brass or silver spine plates. This covers the back of the ring mechanism and it is a very neat solution on the securing of the rings to the leather. I've not attempted to take it apart yet!
Also included with my orders were a couple of optional accessories. The ring protectors and the card/pen holder with the elastic to act as a closure for the organiser/binder. The pen holder is available in narrow (9mm) and wide (15mm) diameter sizes
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| 15mm Pen holder and band and the 11mm Ring Protector |
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| 9mm Pen holder and band and 16mm Ring Protector. |
The ring protectors come in matching coloured leather to your organiser/binder and simply push over the rings when closed. You can choose from a selection of other colours as well.
They are a snug fit, but they will cushion the rings and stop dents forming in the outer leather cover.
And this is the card/pen loop installed on to the rings. The pen holder can take pens up to 15mm or 9mm in diameter depending on which one you go for.
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| 15mm Pen holder and band |
The elastic is very effective in holding your organiser/binder closed. The elastic is only available at present in black.
The folks at MeePlus sent me a variety of their inserts to see and share with you. In no particular order:
We start with a 'My list 100' a long term To-Do list of 100 items.
Thank you to the people at MeePlus for supplying me with the two Slimpad binders and a full range of accessories and inserts. Thank you also for their full co-operation and we look forward to working together in future.
A yearly planner, divided into months/weeks, it is undated in the sense of the actual dates on each day or the year, so it can be easily adapted to start on any month/year.
A Daily planner which has a lot of great features built in to it. But be cautious as to how many of these pages you keep in the binder, especially with 11mm rings.
A Monthly planner, again like the yearly planner it is undated.
Finally, some lined paper on the thin Tomoe River paper and quadrille squared paper on normal A5.
Further Information:
Email: toby@mee-plus.com
Reddit: MeePlus
I love the idea of slim, compact, and simple planners.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in the article, a matching edge distance of the punched holes is essential with small ring sizes (along with a matching hole diameter). Unfortunaltey, I don't know of any hole punch models with adjustable punch depth.
Some time ago I had the idea to use a semi-professional 4:1 punch die, but it turns out that the 4:1 standard uses 0.248" or 0.2475" pitch instead of 0.25" to get a better distribution of the holes along paper edges in increments of 0.5". This tiny difference sums up for the outer holes to be significantly off - at least compared to the hole size.
However, I never tried how it would turn out in real-world, and up to which format the deviation could be acceptable. But then I would still be limited to the 4-step depth adjustment of the semi-professional punch die.
At the end I decided to use paper drills, but that only pays out when preparing a whole stack of paper.
Hans
The punch I use is the Filofax A5 fixed punch, it only does A5 size, but the holes seem reasonable size (not oversized) and the distance to the edge seems about right even in the 11mm size rings!
DeleteThank you for the review. These covers look a lot like the ones from Plotter. At first glance I thought „why did they change their names??“ without realizing that this is a different company. Have you ever had a Plotter cover in hand?
ReplyDeleteNo I haven’t seen a Plotter binder.
DeleteI’ve just taken a look at the Plotters, beautiful but I’m not keen on the writing on the inside back cover, I can see what they are trying to do but it’s the same words on all of them and would irritate me pretty quickly.
DeleteThese are great to see. The only comparable Filofax model in A5 has been the Heritage, which (in my opinion) has been spoiled by the new larger rings and a lower quality specification (the early models were excellent buffalo leather and had 16mm rings). Plotters look great but sadly are only available in North America and Japan.
ReplyDeleteI can’t believe it’s 13 years (almost to the day!) since I first made myself a slim A5 - you’ll find my posts about it on 11th and 12th July 2012.
Part 1: https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2012/07/guest-post-in-search-of-ultimate.html
DeletePart 2: https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2012/07/guest-post-in-search-of-ultimate_12.html
This is brilliant Tim. I’m not brave enough, or skilled enough, to take a craft knife to a planner. You did an excellent job.
DeleteI was shocked by the pricing. For a mech attached to a piece of leather, that's a lot, imho.
ReplyDeleteHans
You should look at Plotter USA then!
DeleteThank you for a really well presented review. The olive coloured leather on the website is beautiful. I’d love that in an A5 11mm rings!
ReplyDelete