The Filofax Chester range has been recently released as part of the Established 1921 range to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of Filofax personal organisers.
The
Filofax Chester model name has been used before, but it looks nothing like this latest iteration.
Chester is a former roman city situated on the River Dee in North West England. It is also close to where I spent my childhood years. I lived about 12 miles (18km) from Chester, so I've visited Chester many times. It still has a medieval wall surrounding the centre of the city, and a wonderful zoo on the outskirts of the city. Therefore, you can imagine this model name has quite a lot of personal connections for me.
I'm very grateful to Filofax UK for supplying this Filofax Chester A5 Compact in brown for me to review and share with you.
The Chester range was released initially in Japan by Filofax, but thankfully they have added it to their web stores in all countries as far as I can tell.
The organiser comes in a sturdy cardboard box.
The pattern on the interior of the box matches the pattern used back in 1921.
The leather has a very obvious printed pattern on it. The stitching is in a contrasting colour and it to a very high standard at 12 stitches per inch, that is equal to what I've previously measured on Gillio and Van der Spek organisers. A Filofax Malden is typically 7-8 stitches per inch.
On the inside front cover at the foot is the embossed labelling of the model number and size in the usual way.
Without any inserts and opened you can see the overall internal layout of the Filofax A5 compact. I think it is very practical and better than the Heritage A5 Compact.
There are two pen loops provided, but they are not elasticated pen loops, therefore you might have difficultly finding a suitable pen.
I found pens over 9mm in diameter would not easily fit in either pen loop.
On other A5 organisers Filofax often make the left hand pen loop larger in size to the right hand one. With the Chester A5 Compact they are both the same size.
Despite the restriction on size, I found my Pentel P207 mechanical pencil and a
Borghini V5/RE roller ball pen fitted the loops perfectly.
In addition to the pen loops there are 10 credit/business card slots available and two full height slip pockets, one 10cm in depth the other approximately 13.5 cm deep. These will be amply in capacity to hold various items of paperwork you might need to carry with you.
On the reverse inside cover in addition to the clasp and pen loop there is a full height zip pocket (19cm opening) and a full height slip pocket again about 13.5 cm deep, with the zip pocket being fractionally deeper. The zip clasp when closed can be tucked behind the leather of the slip pocket, a neat solution.
The Chester Compact A5 does come with inserts, but it doesn't include a diary insert. On the transparent fly leaf there is a sticker which states: Want a Diary? Content excludes a diary, so you can buy the one you really want.
So in my case that will be one I print from the Philofaxy collection 😏
They have included a good selection of other inserts for you to use:
- transparent flyleaf,
- 1921 collection front sheet,
- 1-6 number indices,
- 8 sheets of cream ruled paper,
- 8 sheets of cream dotted paper,
- 8 sheets of cream plain paper,
- 8 sheets of blue ruled notepaper,
- 8 sheets of green ruled notepaper,
- 8 sheets of pink ruled notepaper,
- 4 sheets of to do lists,
- 8 sheets of contacts,
- brown ruler/ page marker,
- top opening envelope
The rings are quite small at '15 mm' internal diameter, but from my experience of using the same size in the
Heritage A5 Compact it is surprising what you can comfortably fit on to such small rings. I managed to get a full 12 months of Week per View diary inserts, plus all of the fill it came with, minus the 24 sheets of coloured paper.
The rings are quoted as being 15mm on the website I measured them at just under 16 mm.
They are the same PXR type rings as fitted to the Heritage A5 Compact. This means they are replaceable (if you can find a supplier), but they aren't easy to remove. However, the contrast to that is that they are very secure. I removed the top plate to check what type was fitted.
The size of the Filofax Chester A5 Compact is very similar to the Filofax Heritage A5 Compact that we
reviewed back in 2016. It measures approximately 18 x 23.5 cm or 19cm x 23.5 cm if you allow for the clasp and pen loops.
In terms of weight, the Filofax Chester A5 Compact without any inserts weighs 286g/10 ounces.
The Filofax Heritage A5 Compact without any inserts, but including the leather fly leaf weighs 279g/9.84 ounces or 211g/7.44 ounces without the fly leaf.
The Filofax Chester is also available in regular Personal size with 23mm rings and Personal Slim size with 11 mm rings and no clasp. Additionally there is a full range of accessories and writing folios in A4 and A5.
See the
Filofax Website for full details of the full Filofax Est 1921 Chester range
Again thank you to Filofax UK for providing the sample for review.
