My Final Review of The Jumper ezBook X4 Budget Laptop.
A few weeks in and I'm REALLY happy considering the price I paid for this laptop. I did have to send one back for a possible bad power supply. The second one they sent had outdated drivers and would crash whenever the PC went into idle mode or power-saving mode. Once I updated the drivers, no more problems. For the most part, the PC runs great now and I couldn't be happier!
I love the features of this laptop. The aluminum case, the backlit keyboard, it really has the look and feel of a much higher-end laptop. The main reason I bought it was to have multiple browser windows open while I'm trading. I'm happy to report, it accomplishes that perfectly. I haven't had any browser crashes, or lag while I'm trading with the new computer. That was an issue I was starting to have on the old Dell Inspiron 1750 and the main reason I decided to buy something new.
Over the course of last summer, I used my Samsung Chromebook and for the most part, it did great. When I was looking into new computers, I thought I'd look for something with close to the same specs as my Chromebook with a little more RAM and a larger hard-drive. Honestly, if my Samsung Chromebook had a bigger drive and additional RAM I'd probably use it full time. Anyway, that's a story for another day. I think I'll do a comparison of the two products in a week or so. The Samsung Chromebook -vs- the Jumper ezBook X4. You'll probably be surprised at what I have to say about them both.
So, after spending an evening trading and doing web design with multiple browser windows open the other night, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Jumper ezBook X4 truly rose to the occasion. At the end of the night when I shut down my PC I was surprised to see the workload I had put the computer under. I had at least 15 browser windows up, I was trading crypto on three exchanges, editing graphics with GiMP, and working on a client project in ATOM IDE doing some web development. I'm happy to report, this laptop handled all of it no problem, and I probably could have thrown a lot more at it without it affecting performance. Honestly, I got exactly what I wanted and spent about half the money I wanted to spend. With the $245 price tag, I'm really digging this laptop.
I was having some multimedia issues but after a little experimentation I discovered it wasn't the laptop at all, but my crappy home internet connection. When I run streaming audio and video through it at work, it handles it perfectly. At home, apparently, my internet connection sucks. I was having serious buffering issues. Maybe the wireless card is a bit weaker in this computer than my old Dell, but my Samsung Chromebook also has wireless issues at home. I may have to call my ISP and try to get this worked out because it's definitely not the computer. On top of that, it handles music and video fine locally. So it's definitely not that it's having a hard time processing the data. It just doesn't have an internet connection for streaming audiovisual content.
When I posted to Twitter, that I wanted a new laptop and was planning on spending under $600 a few people laughed at me and said it wasn't possible to get a decent laptop under $1500 bucks. In my humble opinion, I think that depends on your use-case. If you're a gamer, or do things like heavy video editing, and use a lot of other memory intensive applications then you probably do want to spend the extra money on a higher end machine. For me, I've always had an attitude of, a) WHAT WILL YOU USE IT FOR, and b) "What will it do, and how well will it do what you need?" In this case, it does exactly what I need it too and not only did I spend under $600, I spent under $300! SCORE!
I've never spent a lot of money on computers. Even in the 90s when computers were considerably more expensive than they are now. I would always buy lower-end computers but in most cases, they ran better than some of my friend's big name brands. Back then I'd pick up a magazine called Computer Shopper and page through the back looking for budget computers. It's all about looking at the hardware and knowing what you're looking for. What processor chips are used? How much memory does it have and what kind of memory does it use? How does it process graphics and video? What kind of modem does it have? Once you ask yourself those questions and do a little research you can find budget machines at a fraction of the cost that will usually perform just as good or sometimes better than big name brands.
For instance, going through the device manager on this laptop, I discovered it has a Samsung disk drive. The other one listed is a cheap microSD card I installed for added storage. My point, however, is that it's not a Samsung laptop but has a Samsung drive and Intel Processors. These are decent components found in higher-end laptops at a fraction of the cost.
Granted you almost always have to do a little configuring when getting a budget PC. Software updates, driver updates, maybe upgrade a piece of hardware you don't like. In the end, though, you can end up with a really great computer for a fraction of what the name brands cost.
For the time being, I'm happy with this computer. Again, for a $245 dollar computer, I really couldn't be happier! I guess in the end it will boil down to how long it lasts. If I get a couple of years out of it without any major issues, I'll feel as though this was money well spent.
My final judgment on the Jumper ezBook X4.... I'm loving it for the price. Great features, decent hardware, with a little tweaking and configuring you can have a really awesome laptop on the cheap. I'm currently using this as my full-time machine. As a second computer or travel computer, I would highly recommend this! For an everyday machine, I suppose that all depends on what you're going to be using it for. For me, it meets all my needs perfectly!
This is my final review of the Jumper ezBook X4. I'm working on one other post comparing it to other computers out there and I'll probably write about it from time to time if I learn anything new or discover any new features worth mentioning. Sooner or later I'll probably end up running Linux on it, but I've committed to trying to use Windows 10 for the summer. If you'd like to read my initial thoughts on the ezBook X4 and my Windows 10 summer, here's the original post. https://steemit.com/tech/@the-bitcoin-dood/my-summer-of-windows