Erin Condren A5 Ring Agenda Review 2024-2025

If you haven’t seen the Erin Condren Life Planner Collection for 2024/2025 you are in for a treat! All the designs are absolutely gorgeous! So much so, that I could not decide on just one – so, of course, I ordered a bunch of things on Launch Day.

As part of my order – I purchased the A5 Ring Agenda in Evolve design with the compact vertical layout – and I really want to share it with you here today.

Watch the Unboxing

All The Parts and Choices

Before we dive into my order, let’s talk about the choices and the parts to this planner.

The A5 ring agenda Life Planner (full package as opposed to just the inserts) comes with:

• a cover – in your choice from a variety of styles, colors, and designs
• the inserts – in your choice of 3 interior layouts and 2 interior designs
• a vinyl pencil pouch that is hole punched
• the new Erin Condren ruler that is also hole punched
• the perpetual calendar
• the welcome package with coupons
• and a dust bag to contain it all.

New Bifold Covers

For my order I decided to go with the new bifold cover style in the color Marigold.

The new bifold cover is more rigid than the old trifold and takes up less space when open on your desk.

It has a few slots for loose papers or to insert the back of a notepad, so you can carry around a few planner accessories alongside your planner.

There is also an elastic pen loop that can hold a slim pen.

The flap has two snaps to accommodate the pages inside.

I love the Marigold color as it is very bright and summery. I think that it coordinates very nicely with the new Evolve interior design.

The Inserts

As for the inserts, I decided to go with the compact vertical layout in the colorful Evolve design.

All options for layouts included:

• the compact vertical that I got,
• daily pages, or
• a horizontal layout.

Design choices included:

• Evolve, or
• Bold Blooms.

Unfortunately, the neutral Canvas design is not available in the A5 Ring Agenda.

Everything else that I mentioned in the parts and choices section should come standard with any of the full package options (although the availability of the dust bag may only depend on supply).

Pros and Cons of the Erin Condren Ring Agenda Life Planner

When it comes to planners people are usually solidly in one camp or another.

Some preferred the coiled, some like softbound, and others like a ring agenda or binder style planner.

The Benefits of a Ring Agenda

In my opinion, the major benefit of going with a ring agenda style planner is the flexibility that it offers.

You can easily add and remove pages as needed – and you can easily purchase a hole punch like this one, that you can use to punch holes in any type of paper that you want to insert into your planner.

Erin Condren also sells additional inserts – like lined note pages, budget pages, dot grid, graph paper and more – for the ring agenda. So, it is easy to use this type of planner for project management.

If you find that your planner is getting too thick, you can remove the pages for months that have passed or months that are far into the future to make space that you need for your current planning.

Points to Consider

I wouldn’t necessarily consider these points to be “cons” but they are things to take into account when making a buying decision.

A ring agenda does take up more desk space than a coiled Life Planner when open.

The Erin Condren ring agenda also only comes in an A5 size. So, depending on your space needs and your handwriting size – you can’t go bigger or smaller than this.

Also, opening and closing the binder rings in the ring agenda can be a little tough – especially if you plan to do it often.

For example, even though the Erin Condren ruler that comes with the ring agenda is hole punched to fit inside the binder rings, I prefer to keep it inside one of the flaps in the binder for easy access.

I know myself, and I would be too lazy to flip pages to wherever the ruler was located and keep opening and closing the binder rings every time I wanted to use it.

How I Plan to Use This Ring Agenda

By this time, you probably know that I am not a one planner girl. I usually operate with a planner stack – which means that I compartmentalize my life and have a planner for each component.

To that end, I have had an ongoing personal project that has spanned several years. And I have come to realize that this project needs it’s own planner. Why I didn’t realize this sooner – I have no idea.

But I now see that the A5 ring agenda in the compact vertical style is the perfect solution because I can insert notes pages where I need them, and the compact vertical style gives me lined space under each day to record progress.

This project may also involve adding in photos to document progress – and using my Canon Ivy printer – I can print these out on occasion and stick them in the planner as well.

At this point I cannot wait for July to get here so I can start using this Life Planner!

Planner Accessories

Erin Condren makes it easy to dress up your planning with lots of coordinating planner accessories.

I always like to get the matching sticker book and planny pack – and this year, I really liked the dual tip higlighters/markers in the Evolve colors.

Have You Ordered the Erin Condren Ring Agenda?

With all the great combinations of colors, layouts, and designs – tell me which one you went with?

And if you decided on a different format of Life Planner tell me about that too in the comments below!

If you would like to see more from the 2024-2025 Life Planner Collection – here is my review of the new EC Canvas Collection.