Supernote A5 X2 Manta Review

Supernote's A5 X2 Manta is the long-awaited second generation of the notebook that started the company off back in 2018, and the priorities on show haven't shifted much: this is a 10.7-inch E Ink slate built around writing, and very little else. There's no web browser, no social apps, no colour screen and — pointedly — no frontlight at all. What you get instead is a 300 PPI panel under Supernote's FeelWrite 2 film, Wacom EMR pen support, and a modular chassis whose battery and motherboard are designed to be swapped out rather than thrown away.

That makes the audience unusually easy to define. If you want a tablet, buy a tablet. If you want a digital replacement for a paper notebook that you can still be using (and repairing) in five years, and you actively want the internet kept out of it, the Manta is aimed squarely at you. It's also priced like a premium product at $459.99 before you've bought a pen, which puts it in direct conversation with the reMarkable Paper Pro rather than the cheap end of the category.

• Best for: heavy handwriters, journallers, students and meeting-note takers who want a paper-like feel and no distractions
• Not for: anyone who needs a frontlight for night reading, colour annotation, or a keyboard-driven workflow

The headline achievement here is tactile. Every reviewer who has put a pen to the FeelWrite 2 surface reports that it lands much closer to paper than the glassy feel of a conventional tablet, and Supernote's decision to omit a light layer is part of that — fewer layers means less distance between nib and ink. It's a coherent design philosophy rather than a cost-cutting omission, and it pays off in the one thing this device exists to do. The optional pens, including the LAMY safari Vista EMR at $89 and the $75 Heart of Metal, are genuinely well-regarded objects in their own right, and the new dual slider for undo/redo plus the half folio that wakes and sleeps the device are the kind of small ergonomic wins that come from iterating on a product for years.

The modularity deserves more credit than it usually gets in this category. A swappable battery and motherboard, plus microSD expansion, reframes a $459.99 purchase as something closer to an investment than a two-year consumable — and in a market where sealed e-readers are quietly retired by their makers, that's a meaningful differentiator.

What holds it back is everything around the writing. The lack of a frontlight is defensible but still a real functional loss for anyone who reads in bed, and the panel reportedly reflects enough to be a nuisance. Text entry beyond handwriting is a weak spot: the onscreen keyboard is slow and there's no keyboard folio option, which limits the device as a drafting tool. Gestures are fiddly, the screen is monochrome only, and the pen — arguably the single most essential component — is an extra purchase that pushes a realistic entry cost well past the sticker price.

My assessment: this is a specialist tool executed with unusual conviction, and it earns its place at the premium end. But the deliberate austerity means the number of people who will be delighted rather than merely impressed is smaller than the price tag implies. Four stars for the buyer who knows exactly what they're signing up for; anyone hesitating should try the writing feel before committing. One caveat on this verdict: detail on battery life, processor, memory and software update cadence wasn't available to me, and those gaps are worth resolving before you buy.