This paper presents a thorough literature review of the powder-based electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) technology. EBAM, a relatively new additive manufacturing (AM) process, can produce full-density metallic parts directly from the electronic data of the designed part geometry. EBAM has gained broad attentions from different industries such as aerospace and biomedical, with great potential in a variety of applications. The paper first introduces the general aspects of EBAM. The unique characteristics, advantages and challenges of EBAM are then presented. Moreover, the hub of this paper includes extensive discussions of microstructures, mechanical properties, geometric attributes, which impact the application ranges of EBAM parts, with focus on commonly used titanium alloys (in particular, Ti-6Al-4V). In the end, modeling work of the EBAM process is discussed as well.