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If we're talking core competence, for the Medion Erazer X7825 (MD 98414) that means gaming and that's something it does pretty well, indeed. Unfortunately a few detail snafus in terms of the detail spec prevent it from being an overall winner.
We liked
When it comes to CPU and GPU performance, we've no beef with the Medion Erazer. The CPU is all you'll ever need. We'd like a little more GPU grunt, but that's always the case in a portable.
The GeForce GTX 770M graphics ranks highly in Nvidia's mobile graphics hiearchy. Which just goes to show there are limitations to what can be achieved.
The Medion's display is also decent if not spectacular, ditto the sound quality, which certainly isn't short on volume.
We disliked
The biggie here is hard drive performance. This laptop desperately needs an SSD to improve its all round performance. The lone magnetic hard drive simply isn't good enough.
The Medion also kicks up a serious sonic stink when the CPU is heavily loaded. Factor in clock throttling on the CPU and we suspect the thermal management could do with a bit of a going over.
The way power management for the two graphics cores is set up by default also needs looking into. It will be very confusing for some buyers.
At 3.8kg plus power supply, this is also no flyweight. But we're reluctant to hold that against it. IF you want a powerful gaming portable, a hefty kerb weight comes with the territory.
Final verdict
It's a tricky situation when a laptop does well at its primary purpose but fails horribly elsewhere. Most of the time, storage performance isn't going to have much impact on your gaming experience, though when it does you'll be very annoyed.
If all you ever want to do on a laptop is game, then the fact that Medion hasn't specified an SSD is probably tolerable. But if you want to do even fairly superficial non-gaming tasks, that magnetic drive is going to send you borderline bonkers.
