Medion Erazer X6813 review

Medion’s Erazer range focuses on high-end notebooks and the X6813 follows suit.  Its chassis has a silver metal effect with blue LED mood lighting.  The highlighted W, A, S, and D keys signify that the machine is aimed squarely at gamers though obviously the rest of us can hitch a ride on the capable spec and BlueRay optical Drive of the Erazer.

The 15.6 inch 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution screen displays video superbly and its glossy finish was not a specially troublesome, although viewing angles were only average.  Colours were spectacularly vibrant but contrast was poor.

Sound quality was similarly disappointing despite the Dolby home Theatre logo and good volume, audio quality lacked bass and mid range was ‘muddy’.

Under the hood beats a quadcore 2 GHz Intel Core i7-2630 QM, paired with 4 GB of RAM, and an 750GB 7200rpm hard drive. The Erazer can take up to 16GB of RAM.

For its discrete graphics solution the Medion Erazer sports a 1.5 GB NVidia GeForce 460 M, and 77fps in our Dirt3 test proves it more than capable of playing the latest games.

Needless to say full HD video plays flawlessly either on the laptop or on an external display using the HDMI-out lead.

Benchmark scores reveal this to be one of the fastest notebooks on the market. Of course battery life suffers – even in light usage tests the median Razor managed only 3 1/2 hours, which means you’ll need to lug the oversized power supply around for a full day’s work. Without the PSU the computer weighs 3.2 kg so all in all the Medion Erazer is more a desktop replacement than a portable computing station.

Cheap build quality is inexcusable at this price. Lack of spring in the keys means tactile feedback is terrible – we were uncertain whether keypresses were registering – and both the touchpad and its buttons are also substandard; the plastic materials felt cheap and the weak button actions didn’t inspire confidence.  At least cursor movement was responsive.

Compared to other notebooks costing above $1200, the Medion Erazer feels somewhat poorly made and the screen was noticeably inferior to those of its peers.

On the positive side we can’t find a more powerful graphics card on a  cheaper laptop, but unless gaming is your first priority we would suggest taking a good look at the Dell XPS 15Z, which matches the Erazer’s other specs but features a  decent-quality chassis.

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