Nolty Listy Planner Review
As promised, I’m back with a full review of the Nolty Listy
In case you missed it, I posted a first impressions video on my YT here. If you want a flip through of the three styles of Nolty planner I picked up, that video is for you!
Today I’m digging deeper into the Listy planners I picked up. Listy 1 with a vertical weekly layout, and Listy 2 with a horizontal layout.
Price & Availability
I purhcased both of these from Amazon Japan recently. There doesn’t seem to be many official stockists of Nolty, but thankfully ordering from Amazon Japan is really easy. For those of you who get hit with custom fees, you can also pre-pay the customs charges with Amazon directly. This means no handling fees when your parcel arrives!
They’re also really reasonably priced, even when you factor in shipping and custom fees. These worked out at around £20/£25 each.
Style & Size
The Listys are a B5 slim size. So they sit in between the Hobonichi Weeks and Cousin in terms of sizing.
Each of these planners comes in a few different colours. The inside of the planner doesn’t change, it’s just the outside cover.
The cover is removable, so you can decorate the cardboard cover yourself, or add a new cover onto it.
You may find you want to do this, as the style of these aren’t exactly the most fashionable. After years with Hobonichi and the beautiful designs their planners and covers come in, it’s a bit of a step change to be in a planner that looks like this. I don’t hate the designs, but they’re just very functional. They come with a pen loop though, which is a massive plus for me. These planners would actually work really well in a work environment, as they look nice and professional.
Quality
I’m super impressed with the quality of these.
The covers are plastic and seem hard wearing. I would have no worries throwing one into a bag every day.
The planners come with two ribbon bookmarks but sadly after only a month, they are already starting to fray. This is a pretty common issue with ribbon bookmarks and usually why I end up cutting them out of my Hobonichi Weeks.
I still haven’t been able to find out the gsm of the paper in these planners. But, it’s cream colour, smooth, thick and feels lovely to use. It’s handled all pens I’ve used in it with no bleeding. There is some ghosting but after years of Hobonichi use, I’m pretty used to ghosting now. As the paper is so thick, even if there’s ghosting, there’s minimal indents in the page, so it really doesn’t affect writing on the reverse page.
I’ve also found that because the paper is to thick it doesn’t crinkle or fold easily. This might seem like a strange thing to comment on, but because the Tomoe River paper in the Hobonchi is so thin, I do feel like I have to be really careful with it. Pulling up a strip of washi I’ve misplaced, or even moving a removable tab can bend the paper on the Hobonichi.
I’m really impressed with the overall quality of these planners. The only thing I don’t like is how these planners are bound. The binding on these planners do not allow them to easily lie flat.
It takes some work to get them to lie flat when using, which is frustrating. Thankfully you can pretty much get them flat but if this isn’t a planner that’s going to be living laid out on a desk, you’ll have to get used to re-stretching it every time you want to take it out to use.
Layouts & Set Up
I purchased two Listys and the only difference between them are the weekly layouts.
Both have yearly overviews and a year at a glance pages. If you’re a Hobonichi user, you’ll be familiar with them.
I like the year at a glance pages in these. There’s no ‘extra’ space, like you get in the Hobonichi so there’s a lot more space to write things in each day. This spread is definitely more functional as a yearly calendar.
Both of these planners also have the same two pages to a month layout.
It’s a great layout, basically the same as the Hobonichi Weeks layout. It’s got a lot of space for the days and extra room around the sides for extra notes and plans.
They both also have some grid note pages at the back. I like the format of these pages as they have a space for a title and notches to help you draw out lines, so you can really use these flexibly.
There’s around 40 pages, so it’s only really useful for random notes, rather than daily logging pages. If you were debating this as an alternative to the Weeks, if you regularly use all the notes pages in your Weeks (or you use the Sneaker Weeks) I doubt you’d be able to move into this planner.
Where these planners differ is the weekly layout.
The Listy 1 has a vertical layout, similar to the Hobonichi Cousin.
I really love this format. It has timings from 7am to 10pm which then leaves space at the top and bottom of the page for other notes and tasks. There’s also a sidebar for anything not day specific.
The only potential downside to this is obviously the columns are a lot narrower than the Cousin. If you have large handwriting you might struggle to fit what you want to write in these columns. On the other hand, if you love the format of the Cousin but think it is too big for you, this is a great alternative. I actually use this on weeks when I don’t feel like I’ll be able to fill the Cousin pages fully.
The Listy 2 has a horizontal format and so is like a larger version of the Hobonichi Weeks.
I actually prefer this layout to the Weeks. There’s very little ‘wasted’ space at the bottom or top of the pages in comparison to the Weeks. There is also a printed grid on both pages, rather than just the right hand side.
This is also the first time I’ve seen printed timings on a horizontal layout.
I found this fascinating as I once created a sticker kit to turn my Weeks into a vertical layout and this reminds me of that.
I’ve been using this as a messy preplanner. It lives on my desk (with my pen in the loop, ready to go) and when something occurs to me that I need to do at some point, I jot it in here. I also write things in future weeks to remind myself. Some weeks I’ll also use this to roughly plan out the week, before I do my ‘proper’ plan in the Cousin.
This is probably larger than what I need, but as this is basically an ‘extra’ planner I have this, I’m happy to keep using this for this purpose.
I’ve been using these planners for about a month now, and I’m very impressed
They’re great planners either in their own right, or as alternatives to Hobonichi planners. B5 Slim is also a size that you don’t really see all that often in planners, so if you want a planner in this size specifically, this is definitely one to take a serious look at.
If you’re interested in hearing more about these planners in comparison to Hobonichi planners, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, as I’ll be posting a video on it soon!
