XMG spent 25 August putting a 240 hertz OLED on the NEO 16, a panel that until this week lived on the FUSION 16. Same 40.6 cm aluminium box. Same 2,560 by 1,600. The M26 refresh also drops Intel's Core Ultra 9 275HX for the 290HX Plus and still sells the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 5080, and 5090.

The OLED is HDR-capable, 500 nits in SDR, 1,000 in HDR. Variable refresh runs 60 to 240 hertz through the Intel iGPU, which the last NEO could not do. If you want the cheaper glass, the RTX 5070 Ti config can take a 300 hertz IPS that now covers all of DCI-P3, and it is €145 less.

Schenker published the M26 page on 25 August. XMG's own news post the same day named the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, the 240 hertz OLED, and a starting price of €3,199 including 19 percent German VAT on bestware.com. Igor's Lab filed the press release that afternoon. Basic Tutorials put Philipp Briel's byline on it the same date. The chassis is the E25 aluminium shell. Dimensions did not move: 356.7 by 259.9 by 27.9 millimetres. Weight is 2.6 kilograms with OLED, 2.65 with IPS. The hinge still opens 180 degrees. The RGB light bar on the front edge can be switched off. The news is not a new box. The news is the glass and the chip.

XMG puts 240 Hz OLED on the NEO 16
Original illustration, The Standard art desk (Pablo Picasso). Not a photograph of a real event.Download

The 290HX Plus is Arrow Lake HX Refresh: 24 cores, eight P-cores and sixteen E-cores. XMG says the die-to-die clock sits 900 MHz above the Core Ultra 9 285HX and that the gap cuts system latency. Igor's Lab noted that the release does not attach a frame-rate table to that 900 MHz. The 900 MHz is a manufacturer number. Intel's Binary Optimization Tools, IBOT, are listed as supported. GPU power is 175 watts on the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080, 140 watts on the RTX 5070 Ti, Dynamic Boost included. Those are platform limits, not a FurMark screenshot from this desk. Air cooling is specified at 240 watts of combined CPU and GPU in a Prime95 plus FurMark grind. The optional OASIS Mk2-V4 water loop, with self-sealing taps on the rear, takes that grind to 300 watts. XMG's numbers. Independent thermals are not in the 25 August paper.

Cooling hardware did not move with the chip. Copper heat pipes, two 80-millimetre fans, a 47-millimetre fan aimed at the memory, Honeywell PTM7958 on the CPU and GPU, intake through the underside and the keyboard, two rear exhausts with copper sinks in front of them. Igor's Lab recorded that stack as unchanged from the E25. The OASIS taps sit on the rear row with Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Mini DisplayPort 2.1, and the barrel for the brick. Thunderbolt 4 is DisplayPort 2.1 at DP80, 140 watts or 100 watts of Power Delivery depending on mode. The side USB-C is DisplayPort 1.4a and 100 watts. Three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2.5-gigabit Ethernet, an SD Express full-size reader, a combined headphone jack. Wi-Fi 7. A Full HD webcam with a physical cover and Windows Hello. The machine will drive four external monitors: HDMI and Mini DisplayPort wired through the NVIDIA GPU, the two USB-C ports through Intel's iGPU. Combinations of resolution and refresh across those four screens are not in the press release.

The OLED is the panel that used to sit on the FUSION 16. 2,560 by 1,600, 16:10, 240 hertz, VRR from 60 to 240 through the iGPU once NVIDIA Optimus is on, 500 nits SDR, 1,000 nits HDR, 100 percent sRGB and DCI-P3, glare, response under 0.5 milliseconds on XMG's product page. HDR brightness is specified with an on-pixel-ratio curve: 1,000 / 950 / 700 / 550 nits at 20 / 50 / 80 / 100 percent. Those are XMG's nits, not a Klein meter. The 300 hertz IPS, exclusive to the RTX 5070 Ti, is 100 to 300 hertz, 500 nits, and now covers all of DCI-P3 as well as sRGB. All M26 panels, XMG says, can be capped at 60 hertz to save power. A Mini-LED at 300 hertz is listed for October: 750 nits SDR, 1,000 nits HDR, local dimming that can be switched off, G-SYNC, Advanced Optimus. Until October that panel is a line on a page. OLED and IPS use a MUX and Optimus. G-SYNC is the October sentence.

Base build on bestware.com is the 290HX Plus, an RTX 5070 Ti, 32 GB of DDR5-5600 as 2 × 16 GB, a 1 TB SSD, and the 240 hertz OLED, from €3,199 including German VAT. The 5080 add is €625. The 5090 add is €1,295. The IPS instead of OLED on the 5070 Ti is €145 less. Everything except the Mini-LED is orderable now. Two SO-DIMM slots are rated to 128 GB, including CSO-DIMM at 6,400 MT/s on paper. XMG says the memory shortage means you cannot actually click 128 GB on the site today; 2 × 64 GB DDR5-5600 is the ceiling in the configurator. Two M.2 slots, primary one PCIe 5.0, thermal pads and heat shields, 16 TB on paper. Battery is a screw-mounted 99.8 Wh pack. The 5090 and 5080 ship with a 420 watt brick. The 5070 Ti gets 330 watts. Keyboard is per-key RGB, N-key rollover, anti-ghosting, concave caps, full-size arrows, a four-row number pad, Fn-lock. Glass touchpad 123 by 77.5 millimetres with palm rejection.

Igor's Lab, filing Schenker's release rather than a lab run, was explicit about what 25 August is not. No independent brightness. No independent HDR. No independent frame rates. No independent noise. No independent battery life. The 240 watt and 300 watt figures are a defined Prime95-plus-FurMark scenario from the manufacturer. The 900 MHz die-to-die claim has no attached game test. The predecessor chip is named Core Ultra 9 275HX in the technical section and Core Ultra 7 275HX in one introductory line; Igor's Lab left that contradiction unresolved. This page will do the same. Manufacturer numbers stay labelled. A laptop you can configure on bestware.com is still a laptop you can configure.

Schenker still sells the older E25 configs in the German shops. Geizhals, on the Igor's Lab page, listed a NEO 16-E25 with the 275HX, 32 GB, 2 TB and an RTX 5080 near €4,039, and a 5090 E25 near €4,479. Those are last-generation boxes, not the M26. The M26's €3,199 floor is the 5070 Ti and the OLED. A 5090 M26 is the €1,295 add on top of that floor, not a separate SKU with its own landing page. PC Central, filing the same 25 August launch, converted €3,199 to about US$3,732 and did not attach a ship date beyond "order now." XMG's news post is the better clock: OLED and IPS configurable on bestware.com from 25 August, Mini-LED expected in October and not orderable until then.

Ports on the rear are the usual XMG argument against a thin-and-light: Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Mini DisplayPort 2.1, the OASIS pair, the brick. The 40.6 cm does not pretend to be a 35.6 cm. 27.9 millimetres is the thickness XMG printed for the E25 and printed again for the M26. The 290HX Plus, the 240 hertz OLED, and a starting price that includes German VAT are the 25 August facts. The next number is a measured 175 watt 5090 and a measured 1,000 nit HDR when a lab publishes them. Until then the NEO 16 is the aluminium 40.6 cm that took the 240 hertz OLED off the FUSION 16, put Intel's 290HX Plus in the socket the 275HX occupied, and kept the RTX 50-series stack at 175 watts on the 5090 and 5080. Starting price €3,199 with German VAT. Order now. Mini-LED in October. Weight 2.6 kilograms. 99.8 Wh. Four external monitors. OASIS on the rear if you want the 300 watt grind.