Decided on the 2024 G16 4080 OLED, excellent Open Box at $1893. Successful vbios swap to unlock 175w as well -- thoughts so far.

I was researching and price monitoring for like 5-6 months before finally pulling the trigger.

I had decided a 4080 was originally out of budget but this deal popped up and I thought it was a no brainer. I'm really happy I went with the extra power. Path of Exile 2 for example can still easily dip below 60 fps when running crowded end-game content, so things might have been rough on a lower specd model.

Vbios swapping to a 4080 Scar was super easy to do and temperatures are still satisfactory as I now have it set to 145w + 20w dynamic boost. Otherwise the G16 is limited to 125w by the manufacturer (105w + 20w dynamic boost). The extra wattage gives a noticeable performance bump.

The top bar of the laptop does get scorching hot, but GPU/CPU temps seem normal. Fans on turbo are very loud but I suppose that comes with the territory. On Balanced the machine is not loud at all and can run games like RE4R or RE2R on maxed settings with good performance. Elden Ring with max RT does require Turbo though lol, and MH: Wilds you do have to turn things down and take advantage of DLSS for sure.

I am always on dgpu so battery life is terrible but I don't really unplug.

Overall really pleased, the OLED s a gamechanger otherwise I would have looked at Legions.