The current generation of note-taking tablets have become the perfect replacement for traditional notebooks. Not only can you keep nearly endless pages of notes on those devices, you can organize and reorganize them in any manner you prefer. We’re especially fond of bigger devices with E-Ink panels, as they really recreate the experience of working with traditional pen and paper. That’s why we have a feeling we’ll be fond of the Supernote A5 X2 Manta.
A big screen e-paper device, the tablet brings a full complement of digital notebook and e-reader features, allowing you to read books, write notes, and organize all your written thoughts in a pretty sleek package. To differentiate it from the range of options in the category, they’re making the tablet easier to upgrade and repair by allowing you to access the internal components without using any tools, which bodes well for its potential longevity going forward.
The Supernote A5 X2 Manta has a 10.7 inch E-Ink touchscreen with 1920 x 2560 resolution and a 300 PPI pixel density, ensuring text and images look exceptionally sharp on the display. It’s only a grayscale E-Ink panel, by the way, so you don’t get the color display of newer devices like the reMarkable Pro and the Kindle Colorsoft. The device is built heavily around note-taking, with palm rejection and a textured soft film on top of the screen for a natural writing feel. It also comes with dual sidebars for easy access to plenty of note-taking functions, a two-finger eraser gesture, and even an offline handwriting recognition function that can convert your handwriting into text.
The device comes with plenty of features for sketching as well, including different pen tips, a marquee tool, and layer support. Oddly enough, they didn’t put any front lighting on the device, so you’ll have to use it under a lamp if you want a bit more brightness than what the room’s ambient lighting provides. We guess, that makes it feel a lot more like real paper, but it definitely is a strange omission.
The Supernote A5 X2 Manta runs on a custom OS based on Android 11 called Chauvet. We’re guessing it can work with a number of Android apps, although you’ll probably have to do some trial and error on your end to see which ones can run seamlessly on it. It does come with a number of apps integrated onto the device, including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Outlook, Gmail, Word, Google Calendar, and Outlook Calendar, although you’ll need to do trial and error if you want to see if other Android apps can run fine on it. Other features include a 1.8GHz RK3566 quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage, a microSD card slot that supports up to 2TB, and a 3600mAh battery. Do note, a stylus isn’t included, so you’ll have to buy one separately.
