Medion Erazer X6805 review

Choosing a laptop is hard in this day and age. Everyone, is vying for your money, and with good reason. It’s a tight market, and one that the Medion Erazer X6805 is looking to make an impact in.

Although gaming laptops are a popular segment of the industry, there’s so much choice, and such high standards across the board, it’s hard to make bank in it. A lot of it relies on reputation and build quality.

After all, much like Apple MacBooks, the hardware found across the board, whether it’s Asus, Apple, MSI, Gigabyte, or an aftermarket system integrator like Medion, is all pretty much the same. 

Intel dominated the processors, Nvidia controls the graphics segment, and that’s about all there is to it. Yeah there’s outliers, and AMD produces some very competitive mobile parts now, but by and large the only things that vary when it comes to your buying decisions stem from a choice of cooling solutions, aesthetics, and screens, and that’s about it.

It’s a tough industry to keep a foothold in as a manufacturer, and even tougher for the consumer to pick from. So where do we begin with Medion’s Erazer X6805?

Price and availability

This is the crux of all good gaming laptops. Price. Yeah you can pick up a Razer Blade, or a Asus ROG Zephyrus, and have something that looks both stylish, and performs well, but they cost more than most second hand cars.

If you want a gaming notebook, you want something robust, and you want something with a complement of hardware that makes sense, and although Medion’s Erazer X6805 probably isn’t your first port of call when it comes to a gaming laptop, you shouldn’t dismiss it.

Why’s that? Well you can pick one of these up right now, and have it delivered to your door for less than £900 (around $1,150, AU$1,600). 

Yup, a GTX 1060 6GB-powered machine, for less than a grand. The closest GTX 1060 competitor, MSI’s GT72, comes in at near enough £300 (around $380, AU$500) more expensive. Admittedly you do get two extra cores, twice as much memory, and a slightly bigger screen, but all in all, it’s hard to argue with that price point.

As with most of Median's devices, the Erazer X6805 is currently only available in Europe.

Design

But what about the design of the Erazer X6805? Well, that’s where things start to fall down a bit. The Erazer X6805 is nothing if not dated. The design language, the cutout at the edges of the screen, the cheesy blue plastic embedded in the back, the fonts, it just feels a bit archaic. 

Which is a shame, because there has been some effort put into the design. The brushed aluminum used on the chassis itself is gorgeous. Yeah it’s not the best quality aluminum, it suffers massively from fingerprint smudges, but on the whole this is a machine that could look so much better if it was just dialled back by about 10.

Functionally, there’s little to complain about. You get a whole mess of standard USB ports, five to be exact, plus USB-C, HDMI , Gigabit Ethernet, and separate mic in and headphone jack ports too.

The screen is impressive as well. Sure, it's only 1080p and 15-inches large, but honestly that’s all you need considering you've got a GTX 1060 graphics card powering the Erazer X6805. And at this size, that’s a pixel density of 141 pixels per inch, which is slightly higher than a 32-inch 4K display, but without the performance penalty you get for that resolution. It’s clear precise, and the colors are strong.

Trackpad and buttons

Problems then? Well, the biggest has to be the power switch (requiring a long press to actually initiate any form of life), and the trackpad, being a little less obvious in how to operate than most. 

The keyboard could prove to be a bit love-it-or-hate-it too. It has a synthetic mechanical feel to it, almost like a longer travel laptop key switch. It’s still membrane at heart and comes with a multiple zone RGB function, with your standard wave like pattern littering across it, but it’s dull, and not as bright as we’d like.