Filofax Heritage Personal Compact 2024 Review

[@mike_qbik]

Another great review.. Spot on. Have one myself. A bit disappointed with the leather quality - especially the inside which seems plastic. Best leather is on that useless leaflet which is a letdown. There are also a many misleading photos on their A5 Heritage specification - showing much smaller rings without pins while when you get one, the rings are bigger and rings do have pins visible. Overall there is real decline of quality and form me the biggest letdown is recent cancelation of the Pocket Lockwood Organizer from their lineup. At the end of the day I do not expect Filofax launching any new gentleman oriented atractive minimalist organizer with smaller rings and good leather quality.

[@GrahamRhind]

Thanks Mike. I didn't know about the Pocket Lockwood. That would be a real shame. The Lockwood range is a rare beast - a well-designed Filofax product range!

[@Flatability]

A great review, Graham. I also share my concerns about the Filofax brand. May I ask, did you discover any issues with the rings fitted to your example? I bought this model recently, from my John Lewis store, here in the UK, and the rings were unsatisfactory, with some gaps and poor alignment. On a side note, although I’m sure that Filofax were trying to save costs, I’m actually pleased with the inner (smoother) surface of the binder, which I find make a superb writing surface. The leather dashboard and the amusing pen loop, makes no sense,as you say, and the problems with finding a version without ring “issues”, given this is marketed as a premium product, is frustrating. But the actual design of the binder does make it a great working tool, in my opinion. Thanks for sharing your review.

[@GrahamRhind]

Thanks Neil. On mine the rings are aligned and there is no damaged. (I bought the example that I had inspected in the shop rather than a boxed one, as I always do ;-) ). I agree about the generally good design of the binder as a working tool and about the smooth inner surface - I think it's the slightly plasticky feel that puts people off, and how it has changed from previous versions. But, as you say, given the price and Filofax' experience, it's frustrating that there should be so many issues with it.

[@SteveMorton]

Thank you Graham for this excellent review. The leather and stitching quality of mine is very similar to yours, I have an A5 compact from 2016 and a Personal I bought in 2021 like yours the later one has a very smooth almost plastic feel to the internal leather. I think when large companies sell through Amazon they don't have control on the price, it depends on the number of sales and stock levels. I recently saw massive variations on A5 Malden prices on Amazon France Over €300 for a blue one compared to €130 for a black one! But the black one had no texture at all.

[@GrahamRhind]

Thanks Steve. I wasn't aware that Amazon controlled prices on some sales. It was the mislabelling, though, which really set me wondering.

[@Flatability]

@@SteveMorton I’m fairly sure that pricing is now controlled by an algorithm. It’s certainly an increasingly common situation.

[@CharlieCharlie-wz5cg]

Filofax stopped making decent organisers about 20 years ago