Medion Erazer Scout 15 E1 review

I remember my first gaming laptop—bought well over ten years ago now—with a somewhat complicated affection. On the one hand, I dropped 800 or so quid on it and it carried on chugging for a decade. On the other hand, it really kept me on my toes throughout the back half of its lifespan.

Point being, a first gaming laptop is a momentous event, so can the Erazer Scout rise to the occasion? Well, the first major caveat to get out of the way is that this sub-brand of German consumer electronics company Medion (which itself is a member of the Lenovo group) does not currently sell outside of the UK and Europe. So, US-based readers looking longingly at that budget price tag are out of luck, I'm afraid.

The second thing to bear in mind is that this gaming laptop contains an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 mobile GPU, an entry-level chip that, in desktop form, only promises performance comparable to the RTX 4060, though you do get DLSS 4.

Even without upscaling, this plucky little RTX 5050 gaming laptop still managed to squeeze out just a few more frames in gaming benchmarks than my actual rig, the iBuyPower RDY Y40 Valorant VCTA R003 desktop. But a few extra frames is only one corner of the picture—and, for a number of reasons I'll get into, I'm absolutely not about to trade in my RTX 4070 Super desktop for this RTX 5050 gaming laptop, even with its powerful upscaling options.

First, let's sweat the small stuff; namely, what's the Erazer Scout 15 E1 actually like as a bit of hardware to have and to hold? For one thing, I appreciate the understated flair of the thing; I actually quite like the black-on-white contrasting WASD keys, and the blue underglow from the board.

That said, I did find the low-profile keys in the keyboard to sound just a little rattley. It's not an immediate deal breaker—especially as I know I have the option to plug in a USB keeb of choice and be on my way—but is simply early evidence of the compromises that have to be made to keep this gaming laptop under £900.

My initial impression of the trackpad was that the matte finish makes mouse movement and clicks feel somewhat graceless—but it turns out all it needed was a wee bit of finger grease. Speaking of my oily mitts, the lid picks up finger smudges like nobody's business, too.

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Sure, the Scout isn't rocking up with the most premium build quality, but it's solid enough without also screaming 'GAMER' from an overpronounced fan exhaust or tackier implementation of RGB lighting. My point is that, overall, it's a nice enough bit of budget kit to look at.

The build quality feels reasonably sturdy for this price point, and I've been merrily slinging this into a backpack for a few weeks now. Obviously, at a little over 2 kg, it's not the lightest or sleekest thing in the world, but you could happily forget about this laptop in a robust enough backpack.

Still, you don't get such a reasonably priced gaming laptop without compromise, and that brings us to the subject of battery life. During routine testing in PCMark 10, the Erazer Scout 15 E1 gave up the ghost just before the 45-minute mark. Retailers list the battery as being 99 Wh, which means that to power this RTX 5050 laptop through the battery benchmark, the Scout had to suck up a woefully inefficient 132 W of power. You may already be thinking that sounds a little fishy and it turns out it is: the retailer version of the Scout's specifications are wrong.

Our James ran into a similar situation with the RTX 5060 Erazer Deputy 15 P1, searching the serial number via the Medion website and finding a very different, 53 Wh battery listed under 'components'. The Scout shares this same 53 Wh battery, making that benchmark less egregious but still leaving much to be desired.

Popping the bottom off of this laptop not only confirms the battery situation, but also reveals a pleasant surprise. The Erazer Scout 15 E1 doesn't just offer 16 GB of dual channel RAM and a 1 TB SSD at an exceptionally reasonable price point, but both of these tech specs are easily upgradable too. The SODIMM RAM is easy enough to slot out for something beefier yourself down the line, and as for storage, there's a second NVMe drive slot, too. My review unit came without a screw for any secondary SSD I might want to slot in, however, but that may not be a manufacturing oversight shared by other retail units.

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Anyway, back to the battery let-down: Sure, it's a rookie mistake to only rely on the laptop's battery if you're gaming on the go, I'll grant you that. The case could also be made that if you're only using this for note-taking or reading documents away from your desk, then you're likely to get more life out of it. However, not even getting an hour out of an unplugged gaming laptop is incredibly disappointing. You better hope your train seat comes with a power plug.

Speaking of public transport, there's also the matter of fan noise if you do elect to squeeze in a bit of cheeky Astarion romancing on a lengthy train journey. If you want to play Baldur's Gate 3 at Ultra settings, the fan is definitely vocal about it. Thankfully, it's not whiny, instead yielding a tone consistent enough to be easily blocked out with headphones or just the ambient noise of the train vestibule.

It is still a fair amount of noise if you're not used to the cooling demands of this portable form factor; while I was testing, my other half often commented on the fan noise, at one point quipping to me, "Damn right you're gonna need headphones, or else you'll have a flipping headache."

Though like I said before, it's really not the most obnoxious fan sound I've ever heard. However, the fan exhausts are located along the edges of the laptop's underside, and the speakers are situated such that Astarion's sweet nothings will likely be muffled by your lap or desk. Though you can crank up the onboard speakers to be fairly loud, I'd still say a headset is generally the best way to enjoy the soundscapes of your games as intended—unless you don't mind the sonic overlay of something akin to Wind Tunnel ASMR.

Still, you're unlikely to feel too bad about gaming on this laptop while riding public transport… so long as no fellow passengers are sitting close enough to get an eyeful from your 15.6-inch, 1080p screen, you bear fiend, you. Though I've undoubtedly been spoiled by the brightness of OLED screens, the Erazer Scout 15 E1's screen acquits itself well as an IPS panel.

To first briefly return to the subject of build quality, there's not that much flex when I open and close the laptop lid. I still find myself wanting to be careful as I handle the screen, but I'm not treating it like a little prince. Otherwise, though there's some annoying sheen, viewing angles and colour acuity on this IPS panel both look fairly robust as I pace around my desk. The detail of deeper blacks tends to get crushed down, alongside the brightest whites, but beyond that you're really not missing much. Coupled with the 144 Hz refresh rate, it's definitely a decent screen for the money.

As you may have already surmised, I had a grand old time benchmarking Baldur's Gate 3 on this machine. As a more CPU-intensive game, the RTX 5050 arguably has a little more room to breathe, allowing for a smooth and consistently high frame rate; even without upscaling, I enjoyed an average of 63 fps in the game's bustling, titular city. I mean, NPCs do have a habit of popping in out of the ether as my tiefling gets within 20 paces, but otherwise this budget laptop could easily become your portable Baldur's Gate 3 machine; when it comes to 1080p gaming, you could do far worse.

Though that said, it's difficult to ignore just how toasty the CPU working overtime gets—or how it threatens to burn a hole through my fashionable trousers. Hyperbole aside, I did record a max CPU temp of 99 °C during testing, with averages in the 80s otherwise. No wonder those fans are so loud.

What's particularly intriguing about my BG3 benchmarks though is the suggestion that this RTX 5050 laptop can keep pace with the far snazzier RTX 5060 Asus TUF A14 gaming laptop. Across a number of my other gaming benchmarks, the Scout didn't trail too far behind which is definitely notable given the price difference between the two. Granted, the TUF tends to remain slightly cooler while achieving generally higher FPS, and looks good doing it too. But a hefty saving of more than £500 might just make the Scout's tradeoffs worth it.

Add to that powerful upscaling in the form of DLSS 4, and the Scout offers an even more compelling performance for the money. Without upscaling options, I was getting sub-30 fps numbers in my Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, easily making it one of the most disappointing results. You could still play the game this way, but it would hardly be ideal.

However, switch on even the most basic frame gen options and the RTX 5050 tears ahead with an impressive average of 93 fps. Not only that but, playing between 2x and 4x frame gen options, I didn't really notice much input latency as I loitered around Night City either. Seeing Cyberpunk 2077 go from the worst game for frames to one of the best genuinely feels just a bit magical at this price point.

But this impressive upscaling tech aside, I found the Erazer Scout 15 E1 offered little to tear me away from the very much last-gen GPU in my gaming desktop. Heck, there's little here that would persuade me to make the swap from my actual laptop, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i—and that doesn't even have a dedicated GPU.

However, if I think back on my younger, skint student self, I know she'd have a much harder time dismissing all the Erazer Scout 15 E1 has to offer at such a reasonable, sub-£1,000 price. Throw in support for DLSS 4 and the absolute magic trick that is Multi Frame Generation—as variable as that tech can be from game to game—and this budget laptop really starts to feel like a worthwhile expenditure of student loan money. Offering a generous, expandable 1 TB of onboard storage, you even have enough room to swing more than one AAA release at a time (rather than the carefully curated selection of indie games I was actually playing back in the day).

Telling my younger self she'd actually be better off spending a few hundred pounds more on the Asus TUF A14 would be a hard sell, even if it does currently wear the 'best value' crown in our best 14-inch gaming laptop guide. It's not just that the Asus TUF A14 packs in a more powerful RTX 5060 GPU, but also a battery life that easily stretches past the two-hour mark while gaming. Sure, there's not much in it between this Asus machine or Erazer's more affordable offerings if you're annoyed by fan noise, but it also helps that the TUF A14 is sleeker and offers a more premium feeling build quality to boot.

Still, at a grand and a half, I know my younger self would object, "But that's basically half of my maintenance loan gone, and I need that money for the dubious privilege of renting in one of the most expensive cities in the UK outside of London." Up against such a farcical economic reality, watching and waiting for a good deal on the Erazer Scout 15 E1—or its slightly pricier RTX 5060 sibling, the Erazer Deputy 15 P1—just makes sense.