My friend has an automatic mainly because it is easier on his arthritic knees.
Definitely an advantage, there.
In my experience the biggest pain is the new engine. I think the manual gearbox has an advantage here because the gear selection implicitly 'wakes up' the engine by forcing it into the appropriate RPM band. I noticed when I drove manual courtesy cars that it was less of an issue.
The trick I've adopted now is to use 'kick down'. If you move the accelerator sharply down
half way it will jump the engine to 3,000 rpm. If unsure best to practice on the open road because if you press the pedal all the way down it will jump to 4,000 rpm and definitely won't be sluggish
This same problem can afflict on hills. I have one I drive up every weekday to work and again I find it better to kick the car to 3,000 rpm at the bottom. If you don't you can keep pressing the accelerator pedal further and further before - suddenly - it wakes up.
Neither of these issues afflicted the two previous CVT equipped cars. It's just the engine. It might be very efficient but Honda seemed to have missed a trick when marrying it with the CVT.
One other thing I've noticed is that right at the bottom of the accelerator pedal travel there appears to be a switch. I can't remember if it's on the manual version or not. But if you press far enough to active that you'll get a very rapid response indeed. Or about as rapid as a 1.3 litre engine is going to get
It's a shame this is needed on the new Jazz. It shouldn't take too long to learn and ingrain the habit but the reason I liked the CVT originally is that it was smooth and required no thinking. The new engine has removed some of the smoothness and requires at least a little thought :-/