Watch anime instead.
Reasons- Quite good music, details aren't really lost there.
Read manga in case you really love it since Manga can be read at own pace and also provides slightly different epilogue.

** spoiler alert **
If not for the epilogue I would have given this a 7 instead of 8.

Having already seen anime couple years ago I knew what to expect when I started reading this and was surprised to find out that Light, being a protagonist was actually a very lucky person.
Examples of this are- Him meeting fiancé of the FBI agent before she could meet L and then general assumptions of things going exactly as he planned.

For me the manga peaked when L and Light were together, I liked both the characters and it just felt like good times.
The way Light had planned everything before giving up ownership was another peak, the whole thing with Rem having to kill L was a masterstroke. And that is why I think the manga is a must read.

What I didn't like is the America part. I couldn't bring myself to care much about Near or Mello and just the chaos as Light spends time reacting to them.
It only got better when Mello was mostly out of the picture, story was back in Japan and it Light vs Near.
Except now coming to the end, it was Near who was lucky and not Light.
Near discovering x-kira doesn't have a Shinigami was too forced.
It was very wrong of Near to risk everything bringing everyone in that warehouse because X-kira/T having separate pages (like a piece Light literally had) instead of relying on Notebook would have ruined everything.
So author makes up with that with a theory of Near having written T's name in Notebook in advance.

Overall 8/10.