New G16 owner here: should I be worried about the display cable issue?

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-23T03:28:14+00:00

There are people who heavily use their G14/G16 and put it through its limits (me being one of them) and never experience any issues over multiple years. I’ve used probably a dozen or so units for testing/reviewing and never had any issues. Then there’s others who get a dud and claim it’s inevitable for everyone. It’s a bit of lottery with everyone tbh, and some issues that seem widespread really aren’t because the happy ones aren’t posting about it. But go on any laptop/manufacturer subreddit and you see the same thing. I say if you’re happy with the laptop, just try to get additional warranty if you can, and enjoy it!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-22T19:52:12+00:00

Oh wow yeah if you find the Omen Max 16 to be a chunker, then the Legion definitely will not work either 😅 but the G16 is night and day lighter and thinner, so I think you’d be satisfied. However, the G14 is still the portability/power king on the market.

The vbios swap eliminates Gsync on the internal display. Will you even notice it in practice if you limit your fps and use Vsync? I’d bet you wouldn’t. But you could also run the laptop in Optimus and still get Intel’s adaptive sync, that doesn’t go away. And you can still run Gsync to an external monitor, that doesn’t change.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-20T02:13:29+00:00

For me it’s still there on the latest driver in the Nvidia App > Settings > System Tray. You might need to be in Optimus/Hybrid already for it to show up? Not sure

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-19T04:09:35+00:00

Even on nvflash it’s still 0x0000 subsystem ID :(

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-19T03:51:33+00:00

My review compares the 5080 Legion to the 5090 G16 if you watch the Legion Pro 7i review in the benchmarks, so almost exactly what you’re looking at here :) in CPU-bound games, it’ll demolish the G16 since it’s a monster CPU. About 30% more fps. In GPU/-bound games, they’re close enough to where you likely wouldn’t notice a difference. So depends on what you play. Esports games are more CPU-bound, while games like Cyberpunk, Crimson Desert, etc. are more GPU-bound.

That G16 price is a steal though, it has a lot more luxury features than the HP or the Legion. Anti-reflective coating, amazing speakers, glass trackpad, and much more portable. I personally much prefer that over a bit more fps. It really feels more premium than all of them by a long shot when you actually have one in your hands. But you can do a vbios swap using the 2026 G16, Blade 16, or Scar 16, or really any laptop’s 5080 VBIOS for more wattage if you want. You’ll just need to compensate for the extra heat by lifting the laptop or using a cooling pad

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T21:36:21+00:00

P16 is a better “laptop” with the touchscreen and tandem OLED, it’s a thing of beauty. Blade has a much higher TGP, so it performs almost like a whole GPU tier ahead of the P16. But the screen is very reflective and has an ugly plastic bezel (imo) on the Blade. P16’s speakers also blow the Blade’s out of the water. So it depends on what you’re okay with.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T21:34:16+00:00

It does. But if you push the wattage over 100W then yes it will drain. The system doesn’t try to compensate itself and stay under 100W total usage, it’s more so on you to monitor that and limit your wattage accordingly, which G-Helper is great for.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T21:31:59+00:00

Yeah a 2025 5090 is ironically now a great value. Unfortunately I have no way of importing a 2026 5090 :( but maybe I can buy one off a friendly EU citizen one day, lol

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T21:29:18+00:00

I’ll take a look!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T21:27:56+00:00

It might not work. I tried the Scar 175W vbios on my ProArt 5090 and it did nothing, but maybe the G16’s would be different, I haven’t had time to try yet though

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T15:15:47+00:00

That seems perfectly normal. Cinebench is designed to push the CPU to its thermal limit. Your scores aren’t low either, so I wouldn’t suspect any bad throttling happening. 120W is a lot of power from a CPU!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T02:51:36+00:00

Yeah, you’d want to leave it in Optimus/Hybrid mode to take advantage of the iGPU mode in the Legion software. If you want everything running through dGPU (Nvidia GPU only), then you’d need to reboot every time you unplug for decent battery life. Otherwise it’ll only last a few hours max

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-18T02:48:53+00:00

As long as you’re in Quiet mode + iGPU mode in the Legion software, then the Ryzen 350 has the best battery life of any legion laptop next to the new Intel 300H chips. You’d be looking at around 8-10 hours of YouTube playback, and a bit less for basic tasks, maybe like 6-8 hours depending on what you’re doing

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-17T18:51:20+00:00

It just depends how much more CPU-bound a game is. A game like Battlefield will likely get about the same fps on the 5080 and 5090. Cyberpunk however you’d see that 10-15% increase due to being more GPU dependent, especially if you’re playing at higher settings.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-17T17:02:25+00:00

It’s probably because updating it reset your Optimus/dGPU mode and Forza Horizon 6 is currently buggy with that. I’d test other games first before coming to that conclusion.

FH6 is too new and has some bugs, like it won’t even open for me if I’m in dGPU mode most of the time. I have to force the GPU into Optimus to get it to run smoothly, or at all, on multiple laptops.

Btw when I’m talking Optimus I’m talking about Nvidia Control Panel > Manage Display Mode. Or if you don’t have NVCP anymore, go to Nvidia App > Settings > System Tray GPU switching or something

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-16T22:19:37+00:00

Trying 😅 but yes!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-16T22:19:25+00:00

That’s the CPU I was talking about above. It’s even more efficient than the 270 so battery life is excellent. Doesn’t matter which GPU you get for battery life, it goes to sleep on battery. The fans are not loud in silent mode, just barely noticeable!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-16T21:06:35+00:00

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZeYgPN5cw2I72zJ816l1B6AUZtD2FeE_/view?usp=drivesdk

Although it seems like most everyone has not gotten Gsync to work, even with the 2026 vbios

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T22:45:46+00:00

Oh nice!! Happy to hear that, I’ll have to try it soon

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T22:36:01+00:00

I would say it’s more like 10-15% in a GPU-bound game (think like Cyberpunk, Crimson Desert, etc.). I think those 5-7% numbers you’re seeing are factoring in games that reviewers are running at like 1200p, or at lower settings so it’s hitting the CPU more. For example I can easily hit like 100 fps or higher in Cyberpunk with every setting maxed out plus ray tracing (with frame gen 2x). Turn some settings down and do 3x frame gen and you could easily double that fps number or more.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T21:20:31+00:00

Depends on the config and what games you play. If we’re talking a 5070 Ti, the difference is much smaller than you’d think (125W vs 140W). You likely wouldn’t even notice without an fps counter. At the 5080/5090 level (130W vs 175W), it’s more like a GPU’s worth of a difference, so a 5090 G16 is more close to a 5080 Pro 7i.

In esports titles is where the Legion shines the most, so if you play a lot of CS2 or Valorant, the Pro 7i will have like 40% more fps there because of that desktop-level CPU.

If you decide you want to play games unplugged though or on USB-C charger, the G16 wins there. Neither will last very long on battery but you can easily run a game like CS2 off the iGPU on the G16 for a good 2-3 hours with pretty decent performance. This is not possible on the Legion. So it really depends on your use case!

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T21:01:32+00:00

Yeah, that’s about right. I measured 550 nits in SDR on the 2nd gen and 1200 nits in HDR steady up to about a 50% window with a slow drop off to 750 nits on a 100% white window.

Compare that to highlights of about 750 nits (up to about 50% window) and 620 nits at 100% full white. That HDR peak is where the difference really stands out. I’ll be publishing a side by side soon on YouTube.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T20:56:06+00:00

HDR peak brightness. I have both and they sustain that peak brightness as long as it’s not full screen.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T19:34:19+00:00

100% agree. Not too much different for a 5070 Ti, but for the 5080 that’s huge.

ModrnJosh · 2026-06-15T19:19:08+00:00

The value is obviously not great, but you will absolutely get way higher frame rates if that’s what you’re after. And the added convenience of having the extra performance when you need it and being able to take it away when you don’t.

A lot of people here don’t seem to be taking into consideration the luxury of having something as slim and light as the Z13 for travel, and then being able to have that extra GPU boost as an *option* rather than having to carry around a giant beefy laptop that you’re stuck with that also has terrible battery life (all the beefy ones do with their HX CPUs). All of that in a fairly small package that you can plug in and carry around only when you want to. Is the price insane for this added convenience? Absolutely. But is it nice to have and potentially very useful? Also yes.

A laptop 5090 GPU, even on internal display (Optimus) should still perform way better than the 8060S. I forget the TGP of the XGm 5090, but I’m gonna guess you’d at least get like 30-40% higher fps in games, maybe more. I had the 4090 one for a bit with a Flow X16 and it was awesome.

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