Hello,
I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts on my EZB3. Maybe it’ll help some people with their decision whether it matches their price-value ratio. I bought it 05.06.18 – I bet its version 5.
Pros:
- overall build quality is very good, it doesn’t feel like those cheap aliexpress devices we all had couple of years ago 😀
- keyboard feels smooth and its not too loud
- touchpad works great, it has a matte texture, but I needed to turn off pinch-to-zoom feature as it was sometimes zooming when I scroll
- screen is good quality and full hd
- front camera works nice
- m2 slot works without issues, easy access
- usb slots are very well sized, the plug is sitting very well and doesn’t fall off
- works great with xubuntu 18.04, all drivers work out of the box
- nice performance on internet browsing, movies and less demanding games (WoW, LoL both work nice on middle settings, Move or die is almost unplayable)
- mHdmi slot works good, no issues here
- sound is loud and clear, 3.5mm works, no strange sounds on dim screen
Cons:
- slight LCD bleed on the bottom of the screen (~0.5cm)
- glossy bezel finish around the screen seems to be a cheap plastic and I already scratched it
- magnets that prevents accidental opening of the laptop in a bag are much too strong
- initial cooling system could be better
- quite odd power button placement – I mess it with delete a lot ._.
- totally locked bios – you can only change boot options
- most important: it has some serious problems with DPI, there are a lot of blurry icons, pictures, favicons and apps here and there, both on windows and linux
- pretty short charger cable
- its always charging – even when 100% battery capacity is reached
- rather weak battery (~2-3h)
Mods:
- I added the heatsink mod like suggested on yt, works awesome
- I took out both magnets, then cut one in half and glued them back to both sides. Now its easy to open it with one hand
- I decreased blue tint a bit to make the colors warmer
- on xubuntu: in settings editor, change xsettings -> xft dpi to 128 and match topbar size as you like
Software:
A lot of people had problems with SSD’s and I was ready to fight to make it work. To my surprise the KingSpec 256GB worked out of the box. What I did was:
- make a driver backup (just in case)
- Install ssd (KingSpec sticker top :-))
- Clone MMC partitions to SSD
- change boot order to “Windows Boot Loader (P0)” (this is how its named in my case)
- delete recovery partition and extend system partition to ~100gb (62 seems too small for me)
- make second NTFS partition (rest of the space minus ~30gb for linux)
- install Xubuntu 18.04 (25gb for linux ext4 partition, 5 gb for swap, install boot loader to “Windows Boot Loader (P0)”
- there should be additional boot option in bios now called ubuntu, keep it first in order
- on xubuntu install Grub customiser and edit boot loader order as you like
- all done, give yourself a high five 🙂
To conclude, I think it’s a great laptop for couch usage and to take it with you when traveling. I’d definitely buy it again 🙂
Cheers!
.
