Two-minute review
An affordable laptop with plenty of processing power and a modicum of portability, that’s what the Medion Akoya E15303 promises. Granted, the branding isn’t exactly inspirational. Nor is the anonymous chassis design. But if the features and performance are there, well, that’s surely what matters.
This version of Medion’s 15.4-inch portable rolls with AMD power. You can snag one with a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 CPUn for under £500, which is impressive enough. But this eight-core beast rocks in at around £580. That’s remarkably affordable for such a powerful machine.
Elsewhere, you get 8GB of DDR4 memory, which is enough for mainstream multitasking, and fully 512GB of solid-state storage. Again, that’s a promising all-round feature set at this price level. Then there’s the screen. It’s a 15.4-inch IPS panel with 1080p resolution or 1,920 by 1,080 pixels and sports IPS technology for superior colours and viewing angles.
So far, so good, right? Indeed. From here, however, things get a little patchier. The port selection, for instance, is limited to a single USB-A socket in mere 2.0 spec, a lone USB-C 3.2 connector, an HDMI interface and a microSD reader. The battery, meanwhile, is a fairly modest 45Wh item.
As for real-world performance, the eight-core AMD CPU provides excellent performance at this price point. It really is a lot of number-crunching grunt for the money. There are limitations, of course. The integrated AMD GPU is only good enough for the very lightest of gaming. Likewise, the 512GB SSD is SATA spec rather than PCIe, so storage performance is fairly poor by today’s standards.
But the biggest issue is the Medion Akoya E15303’s 15.4-inch display. On paper, the 1080p resolution and IPS technology is all good. But a conspicuously weak backlight makes for a disappointing experience. Even indoors, it looks dim and dingy. Outdoors, forget it. It’s a pity because the colours, viewing angles and response are fine.
The battery life of around four and a half hours of video playback is no great shakes, either. All-day battery life isn’t a realistic expectation on such an affordable machine. But we’d be happier with nearer six hours.
All of which means the Medion Akoya E15303 remains a mostly impressive package for the money. You get a great CPU, enough memory for mainstream multitasking and plenty of storage, all in a reasonably portable and robust package. But if you want a great viewing experience and good battery life, you’ll need to look elsewhere. And very probably pay more.
Price and availability
Spec Sheet
Here is the Medion Akoya E15303 configuration sent to SociallyKeeda for review:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 4700U (eight cores, eight threads, up to 4.1GHz boost, 8MB cache)
Graphics: AMD Radeon Graphics (seven cores, 1.6GHz)
RAM: 8GB DDR4
Screen: 15.4-inch, 1080p, IPS
Storage: 512GB SSD
Optical drive: N/A
Ports: 1x USB C 3.2, 1x USB 2.0, HDMI, MicroSD reader
Connectivity: AC WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0
Camera: Integrated HD
Weight: 3.84 pounds (1.74 kg)
Size: 14.1 x 9.4 x 0.79 inches (35.9 x 24 x 2 cm; W x D x H)
At £580 (around $599, AU$800 - currently, there is no availability in the US or Australia but an equally aggressive price is likely as and when in those territories), the Medion Akoya E15303 delivers a serious on-paper bang for your buck. With a powerful eight-core CPU and plenty of memory and storage, plus a 1080p IPS panel, there are no obvious spec-list omissions. That said, more expensive systems have larger batteries and slicker styling. The connectivity options are likewise a little limited.
Direct comparisons are always tricky, but by way of example, the Lenovo ThinkBook 15 G2 has the same CPU and SSD size, plus a 1080p 15.4-inch screen, albeit with 16GB rather than 8GB of RAM but costs over £900. Meanwhile, the Acer Aspire 5 A515-44 matches the Medion spec for spec but lists for around £650. However you slice it, then, the Medion Akoya E15303 makes for a very compelling value proposition. That isn’t to say this laptop is without flaws. At this price point, compromises must be made. But in at least some important regards, it’s a very powerful machine for the money.
Design
The Medion Akoya E15303 isn’t going to win any awards for design panache or originality. Functionally, however, it gets the job done.
The chassis is plastic with an aluminium rear cover for the screen and it all feels stiff and robust, while the keyboard (which is backlit) is stable and only suffers from a tiny bit of bounce if you really hammer away at it.
Fairly slim bezels on three out of four sides of the IPS screen, meanwhile, ensure that the Medion Akoya E15303 is reasonably compact for a 15.4-inch model. Speaking of which, it’s therefore impressive to see a full number pad squeezed in alongside the QWERTY keyboard. Nice.
At 2cm thick and weighing in at 1.74kg or 3.8lb, it’s a reasonably thin, light and portable system, especially considering the price and CPU power. That’s one advantage of having a fairly modest battery - smaller batteries are much lighter. The Medion Akoya E15303’s power supply is also very small and light. So, it’s plausible to use this laptop as a daily driver, carrying it into work or classes regularly.
One area that’s a little weaker is port and connectivity. Strictly speaking, the Medion Akoya E15303 has all the basic computing needs covered. It has both USB-A and USB-C sockets, for instance. The snag is that there’s only one of each and the USB-A port is in lowly 2.0 spec. In other words, there is only one high-speed port.
That said, the USB-C port doubles as a DisplayPort video connector. Add in the full-size HDMI port and you have good support for external displays. As for memory cards, there’s a microSD card reader but no full-size SD card reader, which would be much more useful. As for other extras and frills, Amazon Alexa support is integrated and the HD webcam has a hardware privacy switch, which is nice for peace of mind.
Performance
Benchmarks
Here's how the Medion Akoya E15303 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Night Raid: 10,603; Fire Strike: 2,434; Time Spy: 964
Cinebench R20 Multi-core: 2,812 points
GeekBench 5: 1,089 (single-core); 4,269 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Home Test): 4,805 points
Battery Life (techradar movie test): 4 hours and 26 minutes
Total War: Three Kingdoms (1080p, Ultra): 12 fps; (1080p, Low): 23 fps
Metro Exodus (1080p, Ultra): 11 fps; (1080p, Low): 27 fps
The single most impressive aspect of the Medion Akoya E15303 is CPU performance. That you can have eight high-performance AMD CPU cores in such an affordable laptop is simply fantastic.
OK, the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U doesn’t have AMD’s latest Zen 3 cores. It’s a Zen 2-based chip. And multi-threading or SMT has been disabled, so it only supports eight software threads in parallel. For multi-threaded wordloads, the otherwise similar 4800U chip improves performance by as much as 40% by dint of having SMT enabled. But it’s still a pretty performant CPU and great for things like video editing on the move.
If there is a qualification to that, it’s single-core performance, which is adequate but not spectacular. The 8GB of DDR4 system memory is also decent. It’s enough for mainstream multitasking, albeit power users will appreciate 16GB or more. But, again, 16GB-plus is not a realistic expectation at this price point.
On the storage side of the equation, the Medion Akoya E15303 runs a Phison SATA SSD with around 500MB/s sequential read and write performance, plus 35MB/s 4K read and 95MB/s 4K writes. It’s a pretty old-school drive and not nearly as fast as the latest PCIe SSDs. It’s one fairly obvious area where money has been saved. There is an additional M.2 SSD expansion slot. But it, too, is limited to SATA rather than PCIe operation.
The 15.4-inch display is also an area where savings have been made. It’s a 1080p IPS panel, which sounds fine. But the backlight is very weak - weak enough, in fact, to be problematic indoors. It’s just so dim and dingy you find yourself constantly trying to increase the brightness only to find it’s already maxed out. Outdoors? Don’t even try it. In other regards it’s a nice enough panel with good colours, viewing angles and response.
Battery life
At this price point, a really big battery wasn’t ever going to be on the menu. The specification of the Medion Akoya E15303’s medium-sized 45Wh lithium pack is therefore reasonable. But the actual performance is a little disappointing.
In our movie playback test, it runs out of puff in under four and a half hours. Given that one of the stand out features of AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 7 4700U processor is energy efficiency, that’s not a great result. Again, the aggressive price point of the Medion Akoya E15303 means all-day battery life is unrealistic. But we’d be much happier with something around six hours of video playback.
Buy it if...
You want lots of CPU bang for your buck.
The Medion Akoya E15303 packs a 7nm eight-core AMD CPU. it’s not quite the latest tech, but it is a strong all-round performer, especially for the money.
You’re looking for a decent all-rounder with a good CPU...
Enough memory for multi-tasking and plenty of storage. With 8GB of DDR4 and a healthy 512GB SSD, the Medion Akoya E15303 ticks all the boxes.
You want a 15.4-inch display in a portable package.
With reasonably slim bezels, 2cm chassis thickness, and 1.74kg overall weight, the Medion Akoya E15303 is fairly portable. There are lighter 15.4-inch lappies, but they cost far more.
Don't buy it if...
You want a bright, vibrant screen.
The Medion Akoya E15303’s 1080 IPS panel sounds good on paper. In practice, it’s awfully dim and dingy thanks to a very weak backlight. Pity because the colours and viewing angles are fine.
You want to maximise battery life for your money.
Four and a half hours of video playback is disappointing, even at this price point. All-day battery life will always cost more, but six hours or more would be a reasonable expectation.
You need fast storage performance.
The Medion Akoya E15303’s 512GB SSD is a SATA rather than PCIe drive. That means sequential performance tops out at 500GB/s and 4K random access is a little tardy, too.
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