Rocketbook AXIS!

I’ve been a Rocketbook user for a couple of years now. I bought the small notepad and the executive size notebook back in 2020, and have added a few more notebooks to my collection since. The notebooks have digitizable pages that you write on with erasable Pilot Frixion pens. The best part about them is that once you’ve digitized the page, you can easily erase it using a damp cloth.

They recently completed a Kickstarter campaign for something they call the “AXIS”. It’s a step up from their current offerings. What stood out to me is that the pages are replaceable.

I’ve worn out two RocketBook notebooks in the past two years. My wife has worn out one in the same period of time. The AXIS seemed like a great idea for us. Less waste, and theoretically the page packs would be cheaper than a whole new notebook. So I pledged to the Kickstarter campaign for two, and bought the D&D addon packs for us both. Seeing as how we’re both avid D&D players, it seemed like a great idea.

Review – The AXIS sucks.

I had a fairly lengthy review written singing the praises of the notebook and how I was looking forward to getting some of the other page packs. Unfortunately, this notebook is not worth the money I paid for it on Kickstarter.

The first page in the notebook tore when I went to wipe it clean. Never had that happen with the other notebooks.

I didn’t have my Rocketbook supplied cloth handy, so I used a damp paper towel and plenty of water. The barest amount of friction caused the page to slide then tear on the ring. I had to hold the other pages firmly in place to keep the same thing from happening to them. To be fair the pages flopping around are expected from the way the rings are designed. I’d argue that the damp paper towel creates roughly the same or less friction than the cloth does so I suspect this was bound to happen anyway. I also suspect that this will happen with other pages going forward.

I was able to fix the problem with a piece of packing tape so it’s not totally useless. I will say it was also a bit awkward getting everything back in place to fix the issue.

This wouldn’t be a huge issue if it weren’t for all the other small details I noticed while using it. The pages tend to snag on the rings when turning them, which will likely wear them away with time. Even if I hadn’t accidentally torn the page today, that’d definitely cause a problem later.

I like their products and hopefully this is either not a widespread issue or they have a fix in place for future page packs and definitely when they put it up for sale to everyone.