Jumper EZbook A5

Jumper EZbook A5 14 inch FHD Laptop

With the Jumper EZBook A5 we have looked at an Ultrabook with tablet hardware in MacBook Air design in the past days. The notebook is currently sold in China for around $200. Thus it is extremely favorable.

Right after unpacking the Jumper EZBook A5 leaves a pretty good impression. The part looks like a MacBook Air, but is much better processed than the typical China clone. Apparently someone really tried hard here. The case does crack a bit in some places, but that’s Jumper considering the price and the fact that the A5 is mostly made of plastic. But in the important places the workmanship is perfect through and through.

The display hinge is reinforced with metal on the inside and the lid itself is also made of aluminium on the outside. This has the disadvantage that the laptop is a bit top-heavy when standing, but on the other hand it protects the display during transport so that no clouding effects can occur. Opened we find a very big touchpad as well as a black chiclet keyboard. Both are also very reminiscent of a MacBook or have been copied 1:1. The positive thing is that the arrow keys have been accommodated in full size. With the original MacBook keyboards, these are mostly found in a smaller form, which we don’t like so much.

The screen in the jumper EZBook A5 is 14″ and works with Full HD resolution. This is just high enough to achieve a nice and sharp display, but at the same time not to strain the GPU of the tablet chipset too much. At first we were rather disappointed by the display. It looked quite dark and the color rendering isn’t exactly a big hit either. In everyday life, however, the display proved to be a real workhorse, because especially in direct sunlight it’s easier to read worlds than the display of a MacBook.

Inside the Jumper EZBook A5 is middle class tablet hardware. The processor used is the well known Intel Atom X5 Z8350. This is a Quad Core x86_64 processor with a clock rate of up to 1.83GHz in Turbo Boost and an Intel HD Graphics GPU. The RAM is 4GB large. Jumper uses LPDDR3 RAM from Hynix. As data memory eMMC memory with a capacity of 64GB is used. This is also quite fast and reaches 120MB/s when reading and 66MB/s when writing.

At interfaces we find on the Jumper EZBook A5 left and right each a full USB port, one of which even supports USB 3.0. In addition there is a 3.5mm headphone port, a Mini HDMI port with support for 4k, a Micro SD slot and the power supply port. The USB ports unfortunately don’t provide enough power to run external hard drives without a power supply.

We were surprised by the relatively low heat development of the Jumper EZBook A5 in everyday use, although only a large heatspreading foil and the plastic bottom are available for dissipation. During normal work, the underside only gets about 40°C warm, the processor fluctuates between 50 and 60°C. The bottom of the computer is not heated up, but it is heated up. Only when using the notebook while charging the battery does it get extremely hot in the mainboard area. Then you can hardly touch the bottom and the SoC temperature rises up to 80°C. The performance isn’t throttled anyway. No damage has been done so far.

The Jumper EZBook A5 supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Single Band WLAN according to 802.11b/g/n. We measured a maximum of 120Mbit/s downstream. We still don’t understand why the Chinese never install faster Dual Band modules.

The WLAN reception is above average. In the whole building we can stream videos without any problems, which is definitely not possible with most of the devices tested here. Even the MacBook fails before the jumper. Of course, to defend it, the MacBook is made entirely of aluminum, which naturally makes it difficult to guarantee first-class WLAN reception. So Jumper had it a lot easier here. The WLAN antenna in EZBook A5 is located to the right of the touchpad.

We didn’t have any problems when using Bluetooth in combination with a loudspeaker. The transmission went through up to two walls without any problems.

Those who are looking for a usable notebook for surfing the net or working in the office that costs less than $200 and is able to buy some cutbacks on the touchpad can end their search here. For $150 – $250, the Jumper EZBook A5 is an absolute bargain, which can score with its good performance, the usable keyboard and the long battery life. Moreover, the notebook looks quite chic. But of course you shouldn’t expect a full MacBook Air alternative.

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