Medion Erazer Beast X40 review: Gaming notebook with RTX 4090

The Erazer Beast X40 eschews a loud and flashy look in favour of a subdued design that wouldn't stand out in a professional setting. As with its predecessors, the X40 uses a black metal chassis with matt finishes. The base section is covered in a grippy rubber coating. The keyboard backlight (RGB) as well as two fully configurable LED strips (RGB) above the rear exhaust vents provide the laptop with a dash of colour. The battery, which is screwed down rather than glued on, and the rest of the internals are accessible once the bottom cover is removed. 

We didn't notice any workmanship issues on our review unit. Gaps in the chassis are nice and tight, and there are no excess materials left from the manufacturing process. It is virtually impossible to twist the base section. The lid can be flexed slightly, but the amount of give is fully acceptable. The hinges keep the display firmly in place and allow the screen to be folded back by up to roughly 140 degrees. The laptop's lid can't be opened with one hand.

The Medion Erazer Beast X40 is one of the most compact devices in our comparison and sits somewhere in the middle when it comes to weight.

The Erazer has three USB-A ports (2x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2) and a USB-C port (Thunderbolt 4) on board. The latter doesn't support Power Delivery but is able to output DisplayPort signals. The laptop has a total of two video outputs (HDMI 2.1, DP), two audio jacks (headset and mic-in), one Gigabit Ethernet port and a Kensington slot. On the rear, you'll also find connectors for the optional water cooling solution.

The SD card reader is a medium-speed model that, in conjunction with our AV Pro microSD 128 GB V60 reference card, managed to reach speeds of up to 77 MB/s when transferring 250 JPEG images of around 5 MB each and 86 MB/s when copying large chunks of data.

Under optimal conditions (no other Wi-Fi devices in immediate surroundings, short distance between laptop and server PC), the Erazer delivered excellent transfer rates over Wi-Fi because Medion has decided to go with an Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E module. Wired network connections are handled by the Realtek RTL8125 Gigabit Ethernet chip, which is capable of speeds of up to 2.5 Gbit/s.

The 2.1MP webcam captures images at a maximum resolution of 1,920 x 1,080. It is lacking in colour accuracy: the colours produced by the camera deviate significantly from the reference colours. There is no mechanical privacy shutter on the webcam.

The laptop ships with no other accessories than the usual documentation and a power adapter. Medion is offering an optional external water cooling solution priced at around €250 (US$270), which the company also provided to us for testing.

The small cooling unit is fairly easy to use: simply fill it with distilled water, connect the cables and tubes, and switch it on. The laptop and the external cooling unit communicate with each other via Bluetooth, and the connection is established automatically. The laptop's charger supplies power to both the X40 and the cooling unit. The water tubes are held in place magnetically – no tightening of screws needed. However, a few drops of water may leak out when you are disconnecting the tubes.

Medion provides a two-year warranty on the Erazer. Upgrade options are available, but they have to be purchased together with the laptop in Medion's online shop. You can't upgrade or extend the warranty after buying the laptop. It costs nearly €200 (US$216) to extend the warranty by one year.

Mechanical keyboards are generally known for their precise inputs and feedback as well as premium typing feel – this is no different with the X40's keyboard. Its Cherry MX switches offer a moderate travel and an audible and tactile actuation point. The keyboard doesn't flex when you are typing. There are two function keys to let you adjust the per-key RGB lighting to one of the four brightness levels. Overall, the Erazer Beast X40 has an all-round fantastic keyboard.

Even though it is designed primarily with QHD+ gaming in mind, the Erazer Beast X40 also cuts a good figure in applications such as video editing and rendering. The required computing muscle is provided by Raptor Lake and Ada Lovelace. The X40 model in this review can be had for around €4,500 (US$4,856). But Medion also offers a slightly lower-spec configuration (RTX 4080 and 1 TB SSD; otherwise identical) at €3,500 (US$3,777). 

There are three manufacturer-specified performance modes: Office, Balance and Turbo. We used Turbo mode for benchmarking and Office mode for our battery-life tests and enabled Nvidia Optimus in both cases. After completing these tests, we ran more benchmarks with dGPU mode enabled and the external water cooling unit connected. You can find the results of this additional testing in the comparison table, but they are not taken into consideration for the rating. 

Users can toggle between the three modes using a dedicated button right beside the power button. A status LED indicates which mode is currently enabled. Customised profiles can also be created using the preinstalled Control Center software. For instance, you can specify the CPU's power limits, the GPU's TGP, temperature limits and so on.

Note: We used the English user interface in the Control Center software because there are some issues with the German translation. The software lets you switch between the two languages.