I got my Supernote Manta (A5) two days ago. I haven’t used it much—mostly learning the UI and getting an idea of the features. Mostly, I wanted to get my own 2025 planner on that I made with Page-o-Mat and then get to planning 2025.

Generally, I like it and I still think it is the best choice given my preferences. Here are a bunch of unstructured impressions.

• The on-screen keyboard is bad. I hope this can get better in software. Luckily, I think of this as a writing device and won’t want to type much. When I have to, it’s painful.
• I wish I could give files names with handwriting (because typing is so bad)
• The pen/paper feel is really good—even better than I expected.
• The pen doesn’t perfectly make marks all of the time, but no worse than real pens.
• The left and right sidebar gestures are ingenious.
• Inside of their notes, you can make links to other pages and notes, but you can’t do this inside a PDF. Since standard PDF Annotations supports this, I hope it comes in a software update—I would use that journalling.
• I use a passcode to lock the device. I would love it if I could put contact info on that screen so that the journal could be returned if I lost it.

Everything else is as widely reported in reviews. It’s a thoughtful device. I appreciate that I can upgrade the hardware and the software is generally high-quality so far. I am looking forward to having this device for many years.