Rhodia 193101C Spiral Notebook - A4+ Size, 160 Detachable Ruled Pages, Clairefontaine 80 g/m² Premium Paper - Soft & Durable Coated Card Cover - Perfect for Journaling, Note-Taking, Office & School Use

I was hesitant about buying these notebooks given their price. I'm using these for my engineering classes so the idea of spending 50% more than a 5 Star notebook was a little off putting. I know from using half way decent sketch books in the past that not all papers are the same but would it really make a difference in taking notes? Actually it does, a lot. The first thing I noticed using these notebooks is how smooth a pencil goes across the page. Switching back to one of my old 5 Star notebook and using the same pencil it feels like the the pencil is just dragging across the page. Using a ballpoint pen things get even smoother but I don't use pens too often so meh. The paper also seems to take to erasing better. Also having the paper more in the configuration of actual engineering paper rather than just a 5X5 grid pattern is also a nice quality of life (as well looks more professional).Two issues I saw before I bought these was that the pages rip out easy and that there was no hard back. I can confirm that yes both the pages do rip out much easier than from cheaper notebooks (I'm going to stop picking on 5 Star now) and the back cover is not a hard piece of cardboard. I found though for my uses the back wasn't an issue as I use them almost exclusively on a hard flat surface. In regards to the pages ripping out easy, while it's easy to rip the perforation, it doesn't just rip if you look at it wrong. I've only had it start to rip the perforation once when I didn't want it to and that was because I was turning the page close to the spine. Just the knowledge that they will rip out very easy has been enough for me to not be losing pages randomly. This is however a your mileage may vary type thing so you may find it to easy.