Jumper EZbook X3 Windows 10 Laptop

Jumper EZbook X3 Windows 10 Laptop

Jumper EZbook X3 Windows 10 Laptop

The Jumper Ezbook X3, is many ways, is a big step forward for the company’s already exciting ultraportable line, with an elegant, eye-catching design at a reasonable price.

PROS
Incredible price
Super performance
Great design
Good upgradability

CONS
Speakers could be better
Battery life should be improved

Chinese manufacturer Jumper has never cracked the formula for an excellent ultrabook It’s tried ¬– the company’s EZBook 3 Pro was among the thinnest and lightest around. But its efforts often suffered mediocre design and meager battery life, failings that put Jumper behind the very best.

Today’s ultrabook arena has even grown more competitive. Juggernauts like the premium Dell XPS 13, sleek MacBook Air, and the flashy Asus ZenBook UX305UA have grabbed the spotlight. If you’re going for these popular quick choices, you’re aware they work great, and they rarely cost less a grand. A gap that needs to be filled.

Jumper’s new Ezbook X3 tackles these entries head-on, especially on design. It has an Apollo Lake N3350 quad-core processor, 6GB of RAM, 64GB flash-memory storage and a 1080p display – all for the affordable price of at Amazon . If that sounds familiar, it’s because both the specifications and price are almost identical to ASUS C302CA-DHM4 Chromebook, which won our Editor’s Choice award.

The Ezbook X3 caught our attention because of its value, but we fell in love with the build quality and design. Can the Jumper also reel us in or is it, like past Jumper ultrabooks?
Design

In 2017 Jumper introduced the EZ Book 3, a 14-.3-inch laptop that combined a low sticker price (than most Chromebooks at the time) with a quasi-premium design language that melded silver and black for a macho, luxurious look.

That design, was inspired by Apple’s MacBook Air and the same gas been carried over to the latest recipient. The design here is a silver chassis black in between the keys and around the screen. It’s a very small, thin system that weighs only 3.9 pounds, making it incredibly portable on daily commute to college or work. The use of a matte display lid and aluminum lid and lower half makes for a good combination, just like you have on premium laptops.

Ports

If you look at the Ezbook from the side, it copies the MacBook Air’s tapered profile. On each side, there are three ports: two USB 3.0 ports, one microSD card, one HDMI and one audio ports, along with a proprietary power connector.

As with most MacBook Air clones, the power button sits on the top right-hand side of the keyboard. Nothing special here, though. There is a 0.3 mega-pixel on the top of the screen, and the speakers are average, unlike the impeccable rear-firing MacBook Air speakers.
Display

The 1080p IPS display produces realistic colors with decent viewing angles. It’s matte meaning you can use it outdoors, but it isn’t as bright as the Dell XPS 13’s screen. A full HD resolution on a 13.3-inch display is a great combination, delivering higher than average pixel density, which translates into sharper pictures and text.
Keyboard and Touchpad

Like most 13-inch laptops, the keyboard is relatively small and exhibits some flex. That should not be a concern unless you intent to type on it forcefully. The keys are well spaced and have good feedback, without being too springy, especially the full-size Shift keys. On the downside, it lacks a ‘print screen’ button.

The standard-size touchpad is responsive, placed on a level that’s a bit too different from the palm rest level for our liking. You’ll notice some noise when clicking the right or left buttons, which is something you expect at this price point. Jumper bundles the touchpad with a free piece of software called Touchpad-blocker which blocks any accidental clicks while typing on the keyboard.

Performance

The Celeron CPU used here bests most competing atom-based devices and offers considerable processing power. Also, the 64GB flash memory is double what you get on most Chromebooks that happen to be the Ezbook’s main competitors. If you need better storage performance, you can easily replace it via a free M.2 slot, something you rarely find even on spendy notebooks. With 6GB of RAM, this is clearly a capable laptop that easily replaces Chromebooks in the budget category.

Battery life is reasonable at 5 hours 12 minutes, when you take it on a YouTube watching marathon. That’s about average for the category, but almost half what you get with the larger capacity 54 watt-hour unit on the Asus ZenBook UX305UA or the 56-watt hour battery on the Dell XPS 13. If you don’t prioritize all day battery life, you’ll find the Jumper a great travel companion.
Our Take

The Jumper Ezbook X3, is many ways, is a big step forward for the company’s already exciting ultraportable line, with an elegant, eye-catching design at a reasonable price. Particularly, it improves on screen resolution while providing decent battery life and option to upgrade the storage into a true SSD, something competitors can’t claim.

Is there a better alternative?

For the price and design, the Ezbook is an easy system to recommend. The only other alternative is Apple’s MacBook Air, but its damn expensive, but still offers real value for the extra money you spend. If you want to stay within this price, the only other choice in this case is the ASUS C302CA-DHM4 Chromebook, our Editor’s Choice.

Apart from a sleek design and excellent battery life, the Asus DHM4 offers an exciting Chrome OS experience that rivals most Windows 10 LAPTOPS. It gets double the battery life of most budget notebooks, and for students or travelers, that sounds like a lot. It remains our top pick in the budget category.

Should I buy it?

Yes. A MacBook Air-like design and reasonably pricing for a laptop that offers Windows 10 sounds like an overkill. If you’re on a budget and need a capable, portable laptop, the Ezbook is for you.

Chinese manufacturer Jumper is part of a new wave of ambitious laptop/tablet startups that want to flood the world with affordable quality products straight from their factories in Shenzhen and elsewhere in mainland China.

WHERE TO BUY?

Online Chinese retailer, Gearbest, sent us the sample and sells the EZBook 3 Pro for just under $230 as of July 9th. Note that while this price includes delivery, it is exclusive of any taxes that may be levied by HMRC or the courier companies on behalf of the vendor. Want to buy tech from online Chinese retailers?

The EZBook 3 Pro (otherwise known as the LB10) is the latest product from Jumper and is an iteration of the EZBook 3 and the EZBook 2 that we looked at last October.

Like its predecessor, the EZBook 3 Pro doesn’t hide the source of its inspiration. It is clearly very heavily influenced by Apple’s ground-breaking MacBook Air, more specifically the 13-inch model.

The EZBook 2 was cheap but the EZBook 3 Pro hikes the price up higher

Design

Part of the reason why Jumper jacked up the price is that it has shifted to a full metal body with a chrome effect edge running all around the chassis, which reinforces the premium look of the device while making it even sturdier than the previous model. No complaints here – especially given the price tag of this laptop.

It is both lighter and smaller thanks partly to the use of a 13.3-inch display, as opposed to the 14-inch screen of the EZBook 2. At 315 x 209 x 15mm, its footprint is slightly bigger than an A4 sheet, and at just under 1.4kg, it is still eminently portable.

Look at it sideways and you’ll recognize the tapered profile made popular by the MacBook Air. There are three ports on each side of the EZBook 3 Pro: two USB 3.0 ports, one microSD card, one HDMI and one audio port, along with a proprietary power connector.

As with most MacBook Air clones, the power button is located on the top right-hand side of the keyboard; expect no big surprises from the latter (or from the touchpad for that matter). A smaller screen has led to some unwanted compromises like the lack of Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys (you can actually use the arrow keys for these instead) or the sad omission of the right CTRL key.

Note that the keyboard – a 78-key affair – is a US model and cannot be swapped for a UK version.

The three status lights are located just under the single hinge alongside two microphones. Underneath are four rubber feet, two speaker grilles and 10 screws which hold the bottom base together. Remove these and you’ll find the components and a big battery that occupies half the accessible area.

Brownie points to Jumper for choosing a thin bezel for the display in order to cut down on the device’s size as much as humanly possible. However, this is no Dell XPS 13 when it comes to bezel thinness.

Jumper EZbook X3 Windows 10 Laptop

SPEC SHEET

Here is the Jumper EZBook 3 Pro configuration sent to TechRadar Pro for review:

CPU: Intel Celeron N3450 (quad-core, 2MB cache, 1.1GHz to 2.2GHz boost)

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 500

RAM: 6GB DDR3 (800MHz)

Screen: 13.3-inch FHD display

Storage: 64GB eMMC memory

Ports: 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 3.0 w/PowerShare, SD card reader, audio jack, HDMI

Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0

Camera: 2MP HD webcam

Weight: 1.39kg

Size: 315 x 208.5 x 15mm (W x D x H)

Warranty: 12-month

Battery: 48Whr/9.6Ah
Specifications

There are no surprises here. The components used by the EZBook 3 Pro are very similar to what we’ve seen from the likes of Chuwi’s LapBook 12.3, the Teclast X3 Plus, the Chuwi Hi13 or the Onda Xiaoma 31.

Blame this lack of diversity on economies of scale and the fact that Intel has quietly moved away from the Atom brand (the last X-series consumer processor dates back to early 2016), with the chip giant now pushing the Celeron CPU as the preferred entry-level processor.

A few points of interest: this notebook uses a generic nCard eMMC storage module and the Celeron N3450 is a cracking little processor which should be as powerful as a 5th-generation Core M CPU like the M-5Y31 which powered the first Apple MacBook, especially as it has four real cores and a higher base frequency.With the processor having a 6W TDP and 2MB cache, along with integrated Intel HD Graphics 500 (clocked at 200MHz, bursting to 700MHz) plus dual channel RAM, the EZBook 3 Pro should provide a very decent entry-level laptop baseline.

Note that while Gearbest’s spec page says that you can upgrade the memory to 8GB, we doubt it given the size of the device, plus the fact that the two channels are already populated with 3GB of DDR-1600 system memory.

In use
The IPS display produced realistic colors with decent viewing angles. It’s matte meaning that you should be able to view content on it outdoors, although it is not particularly bright. A full HD resolution on a 13.3-inch display is our preferred combination, resulting in a higher than average pixel density, which translates into sharper pictures and text.

The keyboard exhibits some flex, which shouldn’t be of concern unless you tend to type forcefully. Keys are reasonably spaced and have a good feedback/balance without being too harsh or spongy. It’s good to see full size Shift keys, but it’s a shame that there is no ‘print screen’ button.

The touchpad is responsive as well, with maybe a bit too much difference between the palm rest level and its surface for our liking. Clicking on the right or left button does produce a noticeable sound, which is what we’d expect (and want). Jumper also bundles a free piece of software called Touchpad-blocker which blocks accidental clicks while typing on the keyboard.

As expected, you won’t be wowed by the sound coming out of the speakers or the quality of the full HD webcam; the latter protrudes from the top of the display bezel, which is something of an oddity.

Hardware

Jumper EZbook X3 Notebook Comes with Intel HD Graphics GPU graphics supported, better and faster in playing games and watching videos. This laptop comes equipped with Intel Apollo Lake N3350 processor Quad-Core 1.1GHz boost up to 2.2GHz, Ultra-low-voltage platform and quad-core processing provide maximum high-efficiency power. Intel Turbo Boost Technology delivers dynamic extra power when you need it. It also comes with a 6GB DDR3L RAM for Advanced Multitasking, up to 4GB Substantial high-bandwidth RAM offers you a high-impact gaming experience, ensures smooth operation and stable multitasking using feelings. It provides substantial high-bandwidth to allow you to smoothly run your games, movies, web browsers at the same time without any lag or stoppage. It also comes with 64GB Storage Capacity, meaning you can save all your important files and folders safely on your laptop.