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Here's how the Medion Erazer X7859 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Sky Diver: 28084; Fire Strike: 9422
Cinebench CPU: 1049 points; Graphics: 113 fps
GeekBench: 4640 (single-core); 17932 (multi-core)
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 4825 points
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 2 hours and 49 minutes
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 3 hours and 34 minutes
Total War: Warhammer 2 (1080p, Ultra): 43 fps; (1080p, Low): 95 fps
Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, Ultra): 53 fps; (1080p, Low): 111 fps
What of that most momentous of metrics, gaming performance? In short, the Erazer X7859 doesn’t deliver any surprises. For the most part, that’s a good thing. You could pay a lot more for another laptop equipped with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics chipset, including the aforementioned Asus ROG Strix Scar II, and not be rewarded with any additional performance.
More specifically, thanks to that Nvidia graphics and the ample performance of the quad-core Intel CPU, this laptop will output pretty playable frame rates in the latest games at the screen’s native 1080p resolution and the highest game detail settings.
However, as our benchmarks show, that’s only just the case. So, 41 frames per second in Total War: Warhammer 2 and 54fps in Middle Earth: Shadow of War makes for a decent experience. But you don’t really have any frames to spare. It’s likely within a year or so there will be more demanding game titles that may be beyond this laptop’s capability to render smoothly at the highest settings.
With that in mind, it’s perhaps no great loss that this laptop is limited to 75Hz screen refresh, as a 144Hz refresh would be largely redundant, in modern games at least. The graphics chip simply can’t crank out enough frames.
That said, overall system performance is strong. The primary M.2 SSD, for instance, is capable of around 1.5GB/s of data transfer for both reads and writes and this is certainly a snappy feeling laptop.
Verdict
The Medion Erazer X7859 trades primarily on a bang-for buck basis. Keep that in mind and your expectations in check and you won’t be disappointed. It delivers very much the same gaming performance as similarly specified but more expensive laptops from superficially snazzier brands.
It also has a really nice 17.3-inch LCD panel. As a pure gaming machine, therefore, there’s little reason to pay more. As an all-round portable PC, however, the aggressive price does mean a few compromises.
This is not a terribly portable PC nor one that will delight by virtue of its design or perceived quality. Battery life that will really only get you through one feature-length movie, doesn’t exactly sweeten the deal, even if it’s somewhat inevitable for this class of laptop.
All told, the Medion Erazer X7859 largely delivers on what it sets out the achieve. It’s a solid laptop that gets you a nice screen plus good gaming performance at a great price point.
