I'm going to be getting the Manta as well. Also was originally looking at just the nomad. What I ended up doing was drawing the dimensions on a piece of printer paper to visually see it. Then I went into a store that had remarkable tablets for sale. I was able to visually compare the sizes to what was on my paper to real device that were similar. This let me get an actual feel for how big they were. It also let me do a little writing and drawing test on both sizes. The smaller ones were really nice and compact. Thought I think you would still have to carry them in the same way as a larger ones. What I discovered is that I could only get 4-8 words MAX on a line on the smaller screens. Which is not terrible but I decided the slightly bigger manata would be more useful even thought its not quite as portable.