I too like paper manuals for reference. It's all very well having them on an ipad for browsing in a hotel room on a nightstop.
£500 seems steep to provide the paper in addition to e-manuals. On the type of aircraft I fly, training is provided by FlightSafety International in Dallas. They now do not offer paper manuals for my type of aircraft. They do however give crews a free ipad to keep personally and give us new ones every two years as a sweetener.