Jumper EZBook 3 (N3350, FHD) Laptop Review

The width and depth of Jumper's EZBook 3 are quite identical with those of the MacBook Air 13. However, it is much thicker. Compared with Chuwi's LapBook 14, it is slimmer. Acer's Swift 1 has a similar height, but it is much bigger when looking down on it.

As for the interfaces, the EZBook does not sport any noteworthy ports and presents itself as traditional. The dedicated power-in prevents recharging the device with a portable power bank or existing USB chargers. This is too bad. USB-C with power delivery like many Chinese competitors already use would have been convenient. Both USB-A ports are not ideal, either. The right USB port only supports the USB 2.0 standard and is correspondingly slow. The mini-HDMI port requires a rather uncommon cable as the thin casing prevents installing a full-size model. However, it functioned impeccably in 4K and 30 Hz in the test (our test monitor does not support 60 Hz via HDMI, and thus we did not test HDMI 2.0). The integrated Apollo Lake SoC and its Gen.9 graphics (based on Skylake) only supports HDMI 1.4 natively unless a DisplayPort converter is used, and Jumper unlikely implements this in this price range. Finally, the EZBook has a headset jack and a moderately fast micro-SD slot.

The performance of the integrated micro-SD card reader is not particularly good and is sooner situated in the lower range. The device with the best test outcomes achieved 257 MB/s and an average of 87 MB/s by comparison. However, some few weaker laptops that only manage 10 MB/s also exist.

A Realtek RTL8723B 802.11 n Wi-Fi card with just one antenna is inside the EZBook 3. It transmits only in the 2.4 GHz band and presented a mediocre performance in the test. An up-to-date high-speed ac card is considerably faster.

We could not find out whether Jumper includes a manufacturer's warranty. However, the retailer Gearbest gives a one-year warranty on laptops purchased in its shop.

Please see our Guarantees, Return Policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

A matte Full HD panel with a relatively narrow display bezel and a high maximum brightness sounds very good at first. However, the TN screen's poor viewing-angle stability and moderate color reproduction ruin the impression considerably.

Jumper furnishes the EZBook 3 with the latest Celeron N3350 SoC by Intel. It is based on the Apollo Lake platform and finds support in 4 GB of DDR3. In conjunction with Toshiba's 64 GB eMMC memory chip, the small laptop's performance is relatively average.

Both processor cores are based on the Goldmont architecture and, according to Intel, have been profoundly reworked compared with the former generation. A minor advantage over the older Celeron and Pentium CPUs also becomes obvious in the Cinebench R15 single-core test. The older Core m3 in the MacBook nevertheless remains out of reach. The differences between the dual-cores and quad-cores of both the low-cost Bay Trail and Apollo Lake chips become clear in the multithread benchmark. Surprisingly, the CPU does not throttle significantly in the Cinebench R 15 benchmark.

The weak dual-core obviously limits the system performance. The CPU capacity always skyrocketed to 100% when browsing or installing and launching applications, and it slowed down the system perceptibly. However, this does not look that bad when we compare the performance with PCMark 8. The older Braswell systems are surpassed in the Work benchmark. This looks a bit worse in Home (with a 3D part). The N2400 quad-core devices from the same generation are much faster in both tests.

The modern SoC is, however, perfect for watching videos and YouTube. Here, the integrated hardware accelerator is an advantage.

Jumper's little laptop relies on a storage device by Toshiba. It is an eMMC chip with a capacity of 64 GB. It places itself clearly below the slowest SSDs and only has a speed advantage over HDDs. Fast hard drives can achieve a somewhat higher performance in the sequential read and write speeds at most. Compared with other eMMC storage chips, Toshiba's model does not make a good impression. The modules in both the Swift 1 and Switch One present considerably higher transfer rates.

The remaining 38 GB is not much storage capacity for apps and games. Thus, data might have to be stored on an SD card (which only has slow read and write speeds as mentioned above).

The smaller Intel HD Graphics 500 graphics card in the Celeron N3350 is considerably slower than Intel's HD Graphics in the N4200 quad-core due to its reduced count of execution units (EUs), and thus it can only keep up with the HD Graphics 405 of the former generation. Throttling was not recorded even after 10 runs of the 3DMark Cloud Gate test. The last test run even presented the best outcome.

Intel's integrated HD Graphics 500 is only strong enough for very undemanding games. Actually, only World of Warcraft, Path of Exile (first two levels only), and League of Legends could be played smoothly in the test. However, the resolution had to be reduced to 1280x720 and medium details in order to achieve smooth frame rates in League of Legends (35 FPS average in a tutorial). Occasional stutters were nevertheless noticed here. Counter-Strike: GO, Dota 2 or World of Warships could not be played smoothly even in minimum settings on the passively cooled laptop.

System Noise

Thanks to the passive cooling of the Celeron N3350, no fan noises are audible in any load state. We did not hear the often common coil-whining from our review sample.

Although the small SoC is cooled passively, Jumper's laptop stays agreeably cool in all scenarios. We measured a maximum of 42 °C on the surfaces during high load or prolonged gaming.

Both stereo speakers are situated on the front underside and their maximum volume of 80.4 dB is sufficiently loud. However, they do not play enjoyable music as their sound range is definitely too limited. A very visible difference can be seen in the frequency diagram especially when compared with the outstanding speakers in the MacBook 12. Both the high and low tones decrease very quickly, and thus videos are no fun, either.

Fortunately, the integrated headphone jack was convincing in the test. Our AKG K701 was loud and clear without noise in the test. This is considerably better than known from most other low-cost laptops and tablets made in China.

Frequency diagram in comparison (checkboxes above can be turned on/off!)

The EZBook 3's lithium-polymer battery situated in the flat part under the wrist rest is a highlight. It manages almost 7 hours of Wi-Fi browsing at a brightness sufficient for indoors (37% = 150 cd/m²) thanks to its energy-efficient hardware. The subnotebook achieved this in a second run after reinstalling Windows. It was only enough for 5.5 hours in the first test. Whether a program running in the background suddenly consumed too much power or Jumper's original installation had a fault cannot be reproduced. The battery's few charging cycles could also be the reason.

We achieved a much better result of 8 hours and 52 minutes in our video test at just below 150 cd/m². However, the SoC is hardly loaded as the video is decoded efficiently via hardware acceleration in the N3350.

Recharging the small battery in our review sample was torturous. Although it took 2 hours and 15 minutes for it to recharge to 90%, another hour was needed until it was full (during use). Unlike many competitors in this price range, Jumper's laptop does not support charging via USB-C or micro-USB despite its economical hardware. Thus, it is not possible to simply connect an external power bank.