Hey paper nerd!

I recently became quite addicted to printing my own Filofax pages (Personal | A5) and obviously had to get a proper hole punch.

I’ve been eyeing the official (and quite luxe) Filofax Metal Hole punches for a while and decided to spring for them.

There’ll be lots of photos and details, so brace yourself! :)

Here they are. The top one is the Filofax Metal Hole Punch in A5 Size (UK | US) and the bottom one is the Personal Size (doesn’t seem to be available on the official UK site | US). These are the two sizes I use every day.

The punches are all brushed metal, except for the black plastic caps at each end.

As you can tell above, there’s a stopper built in one of the caps to help you place the paper correctly in the punch.

There are also grooves inside the punch which I’m honestly not sure why are there. Sometimes the paper get caught on the grooves and don’t go all the way in. This means you can get unlucky and get a crooked punch.

You empty out the punched scraps by removing the cap from one end and sliding the scraps out. I like this a lot because you can easily avoid getting confetti all over.

The punches seem to hold a lot of little scraps so you don’t have to deal with emptying it very often. Also a big plus.

Shown above: Printer paper punched with the Filofax Metal Hole Punch in A5 Size, printer paper punched with the Filofax Metal Hole Punch in Personal Size and on the far right: Printer paper punched with the Crop-o-dile 3/16 inch single hole punch.

I’m happy to report that both the Personal and A5 metal punches both punch very clean and neat holes. As you can see the Crop-o-dile tears the paper a little bit more.

Both sizes of the Filofax Metal Hole Punches go through a maximum of 5 sheets of regular thin printer paper. I tested mine on totally regular 80 gram printer paper – and could not find the weight in lbs, sorry.

Both punches do very well with patterned paper as well. Again, the Crop-o-dile tears the paper a little bit.

I could not get the A5 metal punch to punch through transparency. However, the Personal size metal punch did a great job.

The Crop-o-dile punches easily through transparency and surprisingly did not leave a bad tear this time.

Shown above: Left: Store-bought Personal Size Filofax paper with original factory-punched holes. Right: Floral Day Planner design on 80 gram printer paper punched with the Filofax Metal Hole Punch in Personal Size.

The Personal size metal hole punch punches slightly larger holes than you’ll find in factory-punched Personal size Filofax inserts.

Shown above: Left: Store-bought A5 Filofax notepaper with factory-punched holes. Middle: Store-bought A5 Clipbook (by Filofax) paper with factory-punched holes. Right: Floral Day Planner design on 80 gram printer paper punched with the Filofax Metal Hole Punch in A5 size.

Again, the metal hole punch punches larger holes than you’ll find in the factory-punched papers. The Clipbook paper has the smallest holes, for some unknown reason.

I personally quite like the mobility of the pages with larger holes. And they aren’t so visibly larger that they look strange in your planner next to the regular sized holes.

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All in all I recommend the Filofax Metal Hole Punches (UK | US). They’re not life-changingly amazing by any means but they do very well.

You may expect more since they are quite costly. Fx. I would’ve liked the A5 punch to be able to handle transparencies and I’d absolutely love if both punches could take 10 pages or so at a time.

I know that there are other punches on the market (not made by Filofax) that can do the same thing but I have yet to try them. And frankly I won’t be buying any more planner punches just yet since the Filofax Metal Hole Punches do in fact fulfill my punching needs. :)

And I have to admit that the brand does matter a bit to me. I like that they’re “the real deal” – original Filofax punches. I’m not into brands because they’re expensive (not at all!) but I love good quality and I love supporting brands that really speak to me.

Before I go, I want to share the video I watched that pushed me to finally buy these punches. Thank you, Adam, for making this comparison!

And thank you for stopping by.

xo Nina

PS. The custom planner pages used in this review are the Floral Day Planner Collection. Also available in A5.