Note-Takers, Concord, and Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin Bibles Compared

One of the most popular questions that I’ve gotten is to make comparisons between the LCBP Note-Takers, Cambridge Concord Wide Margin, and the RL Allan Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin KJVs. I decided to share my latest response including a few photos. The Bibles are: LCBP 2nd Edition Note-Takers in Ironed Calfskin, Cambridge Concord Wide Margin in French Morocco (with custom thumb-index), and the RL Allan Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin in Highland Goatskin.

The updated Note-Takers is the most readable. It has an 11.5-point font with about a 12.5 leading. The font is sharp and clean, is bold, and has minimal show-through. The Concord and Brevier are slightly bolder and the fonts are a little thicker, but they’re both 8-point with 9-point leading. They’re also highly legible, but I think the Note-Takers looks better in the font category (it’s hard to tell that in these photos because of the flash). The Note-Taker’s paper is not as nice as Allan’s and Cambridge’s. It’s thick and great for writing with Micron markers (I haven’t tried highlighters), but it doesn’t take color from color pencils very well. It’s also a little shiny, so if there’s a light shining on the page I have to move the Bible around to see the text better. It might have slightly more show-through than the other two but I’d say it’s negligible.

The Cambridge and Allan both have similar paper and fonts. For me, the Concord is slightly easier to read because of the font style. They have different paper (Cambridge = ‘Bible’ paper, Allan = Writable India) but they look and feel about the same to me. They have a slight cream tint which I like a lot. They have my favorite paper in any Bible I own. The Clarendon has letters in the text to key the text to the references. It also has chapter summaries. The Concord doesn’t have the letters for the references. The references have verse numbers, so you know what verse they go to, but not what portion of the verse. This makes its text cleaner but it’s also harder to use. The Clarendon and Concord are so close that it’s hard to choose between the two. Overall I like the Concord because I like having a concordance and a glossary in my Bible.