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Medion’s Erazer range has always focused on the high end, and this new X6813 is no exception. The silver metal-effect chassis, blue LED mood lighting and highlighted W, A, S, and D keys make it clear that gamers are the target market, but the powerful internal components and internal Blu-ray optical drive make it suitable for multimedia enthusiasts as well.
Performance comes from a quad-core Intel Core i7-2630QM running at 2GHz. This might not seem particularly high, but Turbo Boost can ramp this up to 2.9GHz across all four cores. Combined with 4GB of RAM, our multimedia benchmarks were hardly a challenge; an overall score of 80 makes this one of the fastest laptops you can buy at the moment. Windows boot times were also helped by the 80GB SSD, going from a hard boot to the desktop in just 23 seconds.
Unfortunately, this much power comes at the expense of battery life; an average three and a half hours in our light use test means you’ll have to carry the huge power supply with you if you take the laptop on the move. At 3.2kg without the PSU it’s more suited to a desk rather than mobile computing.
Unsurprisingly the Erazer has the grunt to back up those highlighted keys. Its Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M has 1.5GB of video memory, which helped it produce a stunning 77.9fps in our Dirt 3 test; it might be from the previous generation of mobile graphics cards, but it’s still easily capable of playing the latest titles. With this much power in reserve, it had no trouble playing Full HD video on the laptop, as well as on an external display using the HDMI output.
Full HD video looks great on the 15.6in 1,920×1,080 display. The glossy screen finish picked up fewer light reflections than some we’ve seen, but viewing angles were only average. A reasonable amount of screen tilt helps with this, but overall image quality wasn’t hugely impressive. Colours were slightly too vibrant and contrast was poor. It was a similar story with sound quality; despite carrying a Dolby Home Theatre logo, the two stereo speakers produced thin-sounding, albeit loud, audio. Even with a small subwoofer underneath, bass was barely noticeable and the mid-range was slightly muddy, distorting slightly at full volume.
It was only when we started using the Erazer for day-to-day tasks that some build quality issues appeared. Both the keyboard and touchpad have been made from cheap plastics, which is difficult to forgive considering the price. The QWERTY keyboard has full-size keys and even a number pad, but the lack of spring in each key made it difficult to tell if our presses had been registered or not. Typing was also incredibly loud, which became irritating after only a short while. Both the touchpad and its buttons suffer from similar problems; the plastic construction feels cheap and the weak button actions aren’t very satisfying. Cursor movement was responsive, but it’s a small consolation.
In spite of the high performance hardware, we wouldn’t recommend the Eraser. For a laptop that costs north of £1,000, it doesn’t feel especially well made, and the screen – despite its high resolution – can’t match the quality of other laptops at a similar price. The warranty, too, is the bare minimum of 12 months and requires you to return the laptop yourself. It might be difficult to find anything with quite such a powerful graphics card for less, but if gaming isn’t your highest priority, the superb Dell XPS 15z has almost every other feature in a high-quality chassis.
