Medion Erazer X6813 15.6″ Laptop Review

1. Introduction2. MEDION ERAZER X6813 (Bundle)3. MEDION ERAZER X68134. MEDION ERAZER X6813 (Super High Res Gallery)5. Installed Software, Hardware Configuration and Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra7. Synthetic: PCMark 78. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage10. Synthetic: 3DMark 1111. Synthetic: SSD Performance12. Real World: BluRay Playback with PowerDVD 1113. Real World: MKV 1080p Performance14. Real World: Flash HD Performance15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Gaming: Alien V Predator17. Gaming: Dead Island18. Gaming: Dirt 319. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 220. Technical: Acoustics Performance21. Technical: Thermal Dynamics22. Technical: Battery Life23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

Today we are looking at a new gaming laptop from Medion called the ‘Erazer X6813'. This laptop costs £979 inc vat and comes loaded with a high end Core i7 2630QM processor, Geforce GTX460M with a mechanical and Solid state drive combination. The Erazer also has USB 3.0 support, a Blu Ray drive, full LED backlit 1080p HD screen and 4GB of DDR3 memory.

On paper this machine certainly looks very impressive and we have high hopes that it might be a killer, sub £1,000 gaming machine. Competition in this sector is very tough indeed, with a  discerning audience not willing to accept many compromises. Can Medion deliver a product worth buying? Today we aim to find out.

Specifications Overview:

Intel Core i7-2630QM processor, Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, NVIDIA GeForce GTX460M DirectX 11 graphics card, 750GB hard disk, 80GB SSD, 4GB RAM, Blu-ray, USB 3.0, optimised gaming keyboard, Dolby Home Theater v3, 39.6 cm/15.6” full HD display (1080p resolution).

The system ships in a very cheerful box with emphasis on the media capabilities.

Inside, they include a user manual, software and driver discs, a power supply and cleaning cloth.

The power supply is a modest size, rated at 19.5V = 7.7A.

Medion are using a powerful 7800 mAh battery rated at 86.58Wh. We hope this leads to good battery life later in the review.

The machine is attractive, finished in a ‘brushed' metal chassis. It is supplied with a full resolution 1080p screen which is quite reflective, meaning it should be ideal for enhancing media playback. Sadly I wasn't impressed with the screen at all, finding it a little dull, even at the maximum setting. Colours seemed slightly oversaturated and out of balance, with weak contrast. Viewing angles were less than impressive.

The chiclet keyboard and trackpad are reasonably pleasant to use, although we have used better, even at the same price point. Medion have highlighted specific keys in red, those mainly used by the gaming audience. I was disappointed to see that there is only a single depth return key on the keyboard, which always gives me some typing problems.

The power button is positioned in the middle, underneath the screen. There is a backlight button just to the right which sadly doesn't mean the keyboard is backlit. This button activates two blue lights on the side of the chassis which glow … this was rather disappointing as I think a backlit keyboard is really beneficial. On a more positive note, we are pleased to see a num pad on the right.

The machine may be modestly priced but the appearance thankfully doesn't reflect this. We really like the thin panel and attractive styling. The ‘Medion' and ‘Erazer' logos are chromed and the surface doesn't attract fingerprints or mark easily. Always a bonus.

The ERAZER X6813 is one of the few machines we have reviewed this year that can open fully by 180 degrees, as shown above. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is the only other machine we have reviewed recently that can be used in a similar fashion.

Connectivity is quite impressive. On the left side of the X6813 you will find three USB ports, two of which are USB 3.0 capable. There is a SDHC memory card reader here. On the right side are four 3.5 mm audio jacks for full analogue surround sound and a microphone. There is a second USB 2.0 port here and a tray loading Blu-Ray drive for high definition multimedia playback.

On the back of the machine is a gigabit Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI 1.4 and an eSATA port for high speed storage backup. There is also Bluetooth and Wi-Fi N support.

The chassis contains stereo speakers and an integrated subwoofer for stronger low frequency depth. Sadly in real world terms it adds little to the overall experience and I could only class the audio as distinctly average. The sound also distorts at higher volume levels which is rather unpleasant.

The internal build raised no concerns, with all components securely held in position. They are using a high quality Intel SSD 320 80GB solid state drive for boot, with a larger 750GB model for storage. More on this later.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

Initial boot up is pretty fast, thanks to the Intel Solid State drive. The program list isn't as ‘clean' as we would have hoped, with browsers, antivirus software, media players, and even Microsoft Live Essentials already installed.

The Windows performance rating is high, only held back by Nvidia graphics. An overall score of 7.1 is impressive.

After I installed a few software suites, Windows flagged a warning that the primary drive was running out of room. How could this be with a 80GB Solid State Drive configured as boot? With slight puzzlement we decided to poke around. As the image above shows, the main C: drive only has 33.4GB free. D: drive is the 750GB mechanical unit, which means that E: marked as ‘recovery' is clearly set up a dual partition on the main SSD.

Above, is the disk management overview of the system and we have a lot to discuss here.

To be honest I couldn't believe that Medion would force the user to lose more than half of the 80GB storage to a recovery partition. They could after all have put this on the 750GB mechanical drive, effectively giving the customer the full 80GB SSD partition for software installation. We spoke to the PR group handling the Medion account and we waited over a week for an answer on this before deciding to go live. In all fairness we tried to delay this review as long as possible, but gave up waiting on a response.

We would like to hope that this is a ‘one off' glitch on some level, but we can only review what we receive. If this is a standardized procedure for Medion then it has to be one of the worst decisions we have ever seen. The ‘average' consumer (if there is such a thing), won't be aware of how to make a folder on the DATA (D:) drive, then forceably change all software installations to this folder. 33GB certainly won't last a very long time, especially with Windows 7 hogging a sizeable section of the partitioned drive.

It really is a ridiculous scenario and one that needs fixed as soon as possible. If we get any feedback from Medion we will ensure they get the chance to reply in our review.

An overview of the system, highlighting the excellent Core i7 2630QM processor, a very powerful chip indeed which we have looked at before. The mainboard tab shows an American Megatrends bios. The 4GB of memory is configured to 1333mhz at 9-9-9-24 1T timings.

Medion are using a Forceware driver which is very old, V 266.39. We updated this to Forceware 285.62, which is the newest driver with many bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Overall we have to say we are extremely disappointed with this configuration. Not only is the initial install quite cluttered, and the Nvidia drivers many months old, but losing more than half of the Solid State Boot Drive to a recovery partition is ludicrous.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition).
MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M).
Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HD Tach
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2
Alien V Predator
Dead Island
Dirt 3
Total War: Shogun 2

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

We have reviewed the Core i7 2630QM before and there is no doubt it is a very capable processor. It lags considerably behind the flagship 2960XM Extreme Edition, but considering the price difference this is to be expected.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

A strong overall score, thanks to the excellent performance of the Intel processor.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The system scores 5 points, again related to the excellent Intel Core i7 2630QM processor. Handling moderate rendering duties on this machine is possible, although with only 4GB of memory it might prove a hindrance.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

A healthy overall score of 8,295 points indicates good system performance for Direct X 10 gaming.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. We tested at the default performance setting.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Considering the single card mobile graphics solution, the overall result is quite good. We would expect to be able to play most modern titles with reasonable image quality settings.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate the Intel SSD from the onboard SATA controller.

For a SATA 2 based drive the results aren't bad, although the write performance is lacking when compared against the latest Sandforce 2281 powered solid state drives. Still, it is significantly faster than any mechanical drive on the market.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

The results from ATTO mirror the performance from Crystalmark. The Intel drive in this system is limited to around 260 MB/s read and 95 MB/s write.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new extended Bluray Disc of Lord Of The Rings.

The system demands around 10 percent CPU time when watching this particular bluray movie, leaving plenty of Core i7 cycles for other duties.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

Good performance from the MKV playback, leaving plenty of cycles for other multitasking duties.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

Flash HD playback causes no problems for the machine, demanding only 12 percent CPU time overall.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Nvidia Cuda acceleration is enabled.

A score of 13 minutes and 46 seconds is impressive, if a little behind some other laptop systems we have reviewed recently. The Intel Core i7 2630QM with Nvidia graphics acceleration makes for a good combination.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the system we used a 720p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality High, MSAA Samples 0, 0 af, ambient occulsion off, shadow complexity medium, motion blur on.

The single GTX460M struggled to maintain playable frame rates at the native panel resolution of 1080p. Lowering the resolution to 720p helped increase frame rates, although there were a few instances when the performance dropped below the sweet spot (25 fps).

Dead Island is set in the fictional island of Banoi, located off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The main characters wake up in the Palms Resort hotel to find the island attacked by zombies and mysteriously, they are immune to whatever is making people into zombies. As they try to find and help other survivors, they must also find a way to escape the island as well.

Dead Island is a fun game to play in small doses. It isn't the most demanding engine meaning we can crank all the image quality settings and maintain playable frame rates at 1080p.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

We used the Ultra preset for the testing.

Even at these high settings, the system maintains playable frame rates, although we did notice some unpleasant shuddering on a few of the levels. Removing the low level of Anti Aliasing should improve the smoothness of the engine on some of the more demanding tracks.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We used the medium preset at 720p.

The GTX460M struggles to generate good frame rates with this intensive Direct X 11 title.

Real world testing can fluctuate a little, especially with dynamic environments. With this test we also like to include built in benchmark results via Steam so readers can directly compare against their own hardware. Direct X 11 1080p and 720p results are below.

We measure from a distance of around 2 foot from the chassis with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When idle, or when watching media files, the system is generally quite quiet. However when heavily loaded this situation changes, and quite rapidly too, becoming clearly audible when gaming and loud under Cinebench and Furmark load.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together.

The system fans have to work hard to keep the Core i7 2630QM under control when heavily loaded, which would explain the noise levels on the previous page. The processor peaks at 81c under Cinebench load.

We also attached 5 diodes to the rear of the machine to measure the load temperatures of various parts of the chassis. These were measured after 1 hour of intensive work.

The laptop forces a lot of the air out of the side of the machine. The Core i7 processor can generate plenty of heat so the cooling system is generally quite active (and noisy). It can get a little uncomfortable if you are working the machine hard, such as when gaming. Not the ideal machine to use on a laptop for many hours at a time.

To test the battery today we put the machine through three sets of real world situations.

One as a media movie lover on the move, a person wanting to watch HD media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness (any less and quality suffers).

Secondly as a business man, using the machine for productivity with wireless enabled and balanced power settings with a mid way (around half) brightness setting.

Thirdly as a gamer on the move, with the nVidia graphics card fully active and screen brightness up high.

We were very impressed with the battery life of this machine as it managed to last for over 5 hours under light conditions. When watching media, this dropped to around 3 hours and 50 minutes. The capable battery life will certainly appeal to a wide audience.

Our experiences with the Medion Erazer X6813 have been disappointing. On paper we were expecting great things, after all it is hard to go wrong with a formidable combination of Core i7 2630QM processor paired up with Nvidia GTX460M discrete graphics.

Initial impressions were positive, as the machine is well finished and looks quite expensive. After a few hours we realised however that the beauty is literally just skin deep. Firstly, the keyboard is nothing better than just acceptable. It would not be a machine I would want to use for business duties, as neither keyboard or touchpad make the experience enjoyable long term.

When compared to the slightly more expensive Lenovo ThinkPad X1, it pales dramatically. Unfortunately the X6813 isn't supplied with a backlit keyboard either, even though there is a ‘light' button. Bizarrely, this light button turns on two glowing side panels on the machine, rather than anything remotely useful in the real world. Before you ask, they aren't bright enough to light up the keyboard in a dark room either.

The 15.6″ screen didn't impress me… while only slightly reflective it has a poor contrast level, lacks overall brightness and the unbalanced colour saturation makes it difficult to use as a photo editing machine. It may have a high 1080p (1920×1080) resolution, but I wouldn't want to use it for anything remotely serious.

The onboard sound system should pack a punch, after all Medion include a subwoofer to help enhance low frequency response. Sadly, it fails to improve the sound quality, and music sounds thin, even distorting at a modest volume.

The biggest problem I have with the Erazer X6813 however is the software installation and operating system configuration. I have never seen a manufacturer include an quality Intel 80 GB Solid State Drive then decide to partition it in a manner that basically excludes the user from accessing more than 33GB under normal circumstances. I appreciate the added protection by including a recovery partition, but why not use the mechanical 750GB drive in a partitioned state for this duty? Or just include a mirrored dual layer DVD disc and forget about partitioning entirely?

An inexperienced user will not know how to resize this boot partition or manually how to install programs to the secondary D: drive to leave some room on the boot drive. I still can't get over how this managed to creep into a production model, unless it was an isolated incident. I mentioned this to the Medion PR team weeks ago, holding off on publication for as long as possible. Sadly I am still waiting on an official response, so your guess is as good as mine.

The Intel Core i7 2630QM processor is without question the strong point of this system, however the Erazer X6813 fans have to work hard to maintain good internal thermal dynamics, a common problem from pairing up a smaller chassis with such a high end mobile processor. The end user has to deal with considerable noise due to this, and a hot chassis when tasked hard.

Battery life is a strong aspect of the design as we managed to achieve over 5 hours under general, light duties. When loaded, it still managed to run for over 3 hours before a recharge would be required. The Nvidia GTX460M is a solid gaming card, although I prefer the GTX560M due to improved Direct X 11 performance.

Sadly, I have to give this machine a thumbs down, there are too many problems for Kitguru to recommend it to our audience.

You can buy it directly from the Medion store, over here.

Pros:

• Great battery life.
• Intel Core i7 2630QM.
• Looks good.
• 1080p resolution.
• plenty of ports.
• decent gaming performance.

Cons:

• Screen is poorly backlit, lacks contrast and suffers from colour inconsistencies.
• Keyboard and touchpad are average.
• Sound system is poor.
• Gets hot and loud under load.
• only 4GB of 1333mhz memory.
• old Nvidia driver installed.
• light switch doesn't support the keyboard, just two lights at the side of the machine.

Kitguru says: Business users should look at the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 which is only slightly more expensive and is significantly better. Gamers should look at the recent Asus or MSI machines, around £1,000.

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