Guest Post - Filofax Clipbook Personal - my ‘Goldilocks’ Filofax? - Jane

Thank you to Jane for this guest post about the Filofax Clipbook Personal size. 

I’ve seen them on the retailer’s shelf and passed them by - even thought they looked a bit weird with those prominent rings and strange opening mechanism; why would I want one - I’m a ‘proper’ Filofax user.  But two months into actually trying Clipbook personal and I am wondering- could this be my ‘goldilocks’ Filofax?

Those luxury personal Filofax binders are gorgeous- but are just a bit too chunky & heavy to enjoy carrying around. The pocket size are equally lovely, dinky and cute, but in practice I find the pages are a bit too small for comfortable writing.

The compact personal size should be ideal but even with 15mm ring capacity I find myself rationing new pages as the rings are usually already full. But the Clipbook may just hit the sweet spot with its lightweight, compact and flexible form, the personal paper size and its 25 mm rings capacity.

So far so good.

The Clipbook advantage is most striking when you compare weights, which I measured with typical contents and no pen:

• Finchley personal  400g
• Holborn compact personal 290g
• Aston pocket 230g
• Clipbook personal 230g

We’re all different so I’ll explain how I use my binder: most information is in my iPhone but some things work better for me on paper: this week/ this month plans and a year view calendar; a general notebook; and topic/ project plans & notes.

I’m recently retired but have various activities inside and outside of the home to keep track of. I’m not one for fancy fountain pens, posh paper, or pretty page decoration, and don’t need pockets and wallets; I just want a functional loose leaf notebook which feels easy, natural and enjoyable to use, at home or out and about.

I’ve tried them all -: Filofaxes (mini, personal, compact & pocket), then Moleskines (hard and soft back), a Bullet Journal, Filofax Notebook, back to Filofax compact - then pocket again.

Each has its appeal and works for a while (months even) till its limitations become just too frustrating and I’m tempted to try something else.

Maybe A6 would suit me better, I had been thinking, so I studied Philofaxy reviews of A6 options (thank you) but the price of binders and the bother of printing my own inserts for what would be just an experiment was off putting.

Then I saw the Clipbook in a store again and suddenly recognised a potential solution to my right-size-binder dilemma - or at least a much cheaper experiment! A light and compact binder for personal size paper with 25mm rings - yay!

So what is it like to use?

The cover is a pleasantly tactile soft vinyl feel and I chose black for an understated and functional look - although other designs & attractive pastels are available. It comes with various useful papers and undated diary/ calendar formats which I’ve added to my stocks, preferring to continue with the existing personal size inserts I was using beforehand.

My page markers stick out slightly top and bottom (not a problem) but the side divider tabs do fit just within the cover.

Filofax marketing stresses the flexibility of Clipbook and how you can personalise contents and decorate the covers to suit your own style. I’m not one for all that - but I see Filofax do offer the option of tasteful personalised lettering on the cover. Perhaps I could reward myself if I’m still using Clipbook by next Christmas!

One thing which feels a bit awkward at first is the action of pulling apart the covers to open the rings, when you’ve always been used to pressing the tabs. One benefit of the flexible spine is that you can flip it to one side or the other to ensure that when you open the rings the side with the higher stack of pages won’t pop off.

It comfortably holds more than the compact size but the construction does mean that part of the ring capacity is taken up by the cover itself so it might not suit someone with the full 25mm of pages to stuff in.

An unexpected benefit is that the flexible spine and hinged covers raise up the pages on the edge next to the rings, giving them more support, closer together across a ‘spread’ of pages and reducing the extent to which the rings are in the way for writing.

It’s small and light enough to hold in one hand and write with the other. And holding by the spine allows you to flick through the pages a bit like a bound notebook.

There are 3 options for storing my frixion multi pen: hooked on a ring inside the spine (as in an earlier photo); tucking the pen clip through an adhesive pen loop I’ve mounted on a card insert; and simply closing the book with the pen inside the pages.

The book does lack a closure so my talented crafty husband has made one which keeps the book together in my bag. He made small incisions into the back cover and inserted the ends of the elastic between the layers which form the cover, along with some rubber based glue. It works just fine.

So that’s it - the perfect planner/ notebook sorted! (Fingers crossed.) I hope this review is helpful for anyone else who like me struggles to find their ‘right size’ Filofax.

Thank you Jane for sharing your post with us. The personal size it certainly worth looking at for a practical straight forward simple organiser. 

Filofax Clipbook

The Filofax Clipbook is a bit of a 'Marmite' product, you either love it or you hate it! It is quite a novel design though and you can fold the cover back on itself to minimise the amount of desk space used when writing in it. It is now available in more sizes as well.

At first it looks quite a plain design with covers in a few plain colours, but that has its advantages as you will see.

If you are a bit of a creative person... and I'm not! Then the Clipbook is brilliant for doing lots of simple and effective creative things with. 

Take a look at the videos recently released by Filofax to see what I mean. 

Shop for Clipbook on the Filofax Website.

Filofax Clipbook Winners...

Thank you to everyone who left such excellent comments against my review of the Clipbook last week. The few ideas and suggestions I made in the post certainly seemed to get you all thinking of things you could use the Clipbook for.

Being relatively inexpensive but very practical, I am sure this new product will become quite a success.

Now comes the exciting bit... who are the lucky four people won are winners of the lucky draw for one of the four review samples I have to give away.....

• Jo
• Lynn Colagiacomo
• Kate473

If your comment name appears in the above list please get in touch as quickly as possible by emailing steve at philofaxy dot com to claim your prize. I will need to know your mailing address and I will try to get the parcels posted by the middle of the week. 

If anyone doesn't claim their prize by Friday I will draw a new name out of the hat. 

If you missed out the Clipbook is available on-line at Filofax UK.

Thank you once again for all your excellent comments and suggestions. 

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?

Press Release: Make Of Me What You Fill

The latest innovation from Filofax is not about organisation, it’s about individualisation

Clipbook offers the simplicity of a notebook yet without the limitations of a bound book. Its clever, patented design incorporates a six ring mechanism into the spine which can be opened with a gentle pull on both sides of the reinforced cover. The smart construction means you can add your own content as the book simply expands to accommodate more pages and shrinks back down when you want less. Even the outside can be customised by hanging small charms onto the cover rings.

Clipbook lies flat when open, providing an ideal writing surface and folds back on itself making it instantly useable on the move. It comes with a starter pack of note papers and undated diary and planner, and in A5 it’s compatible with Filofax A5 refills.

The first collection includes a soft, textured leather-look version in black, white and turquoise RRP £18 and following soon after with translucent fluoro pink and purple RRP £15.

Clipbook is initially being trialled in the UK and will be on sale on the Filofax website www.filofax.co.uk from w/c 7th April (fluoro pink and purple from w/c 14th April). It has been on sale during the past few weeks in selected WHSmith stores and will be expanded into more of their stores in the coming weeks. Visit the Filofax UK blog page to read the Clipbook designer’s inspiration next week.

Philofaxy will have a review of the Clipbook in the next couple of weeks.