Genesis G80 Black 2025 Review

The 2025 Genesis G80 Black has just been introduced as a Model Year 2026, and costs $125,200 before on-road costs. There are no factory options, and obviously the only paint tint available for the Black is... black.

A five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty applies for private buyers (or five years/130,000km for vehicles used at any time for a commercial application) and scheduled servicing is free for the first five years/75,000km.

There’s also 10 years/unlimited kilometre roadside assistance.

Provided you’re the first owner, you also get a concierge service called Genesis To You. This includes free car pick up/drop off and a courtesy car for any warranty issues or servicing during the first five years/75,000km service period. The catch for Genesis To You is that you must live within 70km driving distance from a Genesis service outlet.

The 2025 Genesis G80 Black tested here is based on the Signature trim grade. It shares the V6 all-wheel drive (AWD) powertrain with the Sport, but lacks its rear-wheel steering, launch control and other ‘sporty’ features such as aluminium pedal facings.

What you do have as part of the G80 Black package is a concerted effort to blackout parts that otherwise might appear in chrome or a colour. So, the features exclusive to the G80 Black include the black grille, dark-tinted Genesis grille emblem and boot lettering, black-chrome side headlight bezels, window mouldings and body cladding, black 20-inch wheels with floating centre caps.

Then there are black brake calipers, dark-tinted Genesis steering wheel logo, black Nappa leather seat quilting and piping, black-themed dash screen graphics and exclusive welcome/goodbye animation. There are also black ash wood garnishes, black bezels and switchgear and black aluminium speaker grilles.

Further to these embellishments the G80 gains keyless entry and start, fingerprint recognition system (for user recognition and starting) remote start, remote parking assist, three-zone climate control, 18-way power adjustable front seats with memory settings, front and outer rear seat heating and cooling functions, steering wheel and centre armrest heating, power-adjustable steering column, sunroof, manual rear door sunshades, power rear window sunshade, powered, hands-free boot operation and lots more.

The 2025 Genesis G80 Black has 10 airbags fitted, including dual frontal, side curtain, side chest front and rear, driver’s knee and front centre airbag. All but the V6 engined G80s were awarded a five-star ANCAP rating from 2021, so the G80 Black we’re testing here is unrated.

Headlights are all LED, with high beam assist, while there are parking front/rear sensors and 360-degree camera views. Remote parking via the smart key or auto parking while driving is also bundled. Active cruise control is standard, with stop-go functionality.

There’s a long list of active safety features, but highlights include rear/side blind spot collision avoidance assistance, blind spot view monitor and driver attention warning (including leading vehicle departure alert). Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) includes pedestrian and cyclist detection as well as junction turning/junction crossing and lane changing. Lane departure warning and intervention are also part of the package.

With a long 27-inch dash/infotainment OLED display sweeping across the dash, the 2025 Genesis G80 Black also incorporates a head-up display, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, wireless phone charging, AM/FM radio and Genesis Connected Services (GCS).

GCS incorporates a whole raft of functions, such as windows/locking/climate control remote activation, vehicle status, over the air updates and remote monitoring features.

There’s a high-end 18-speaker Bang & Olufsen audio system, too.

In what’s increasingly becoming an old-school way, the 2025 Genesis G80 Black is powered by an internal combustion engine without hybrid or EV ‘stuff’ – thank you very much. A longitudinal twin turbocharged V6 petrol engine (with 279kW/530Nm peak outputs) and eight-speed automatic transfers drive to all four wheels.

This engine is effortless in its performance, and with a claimed zero to 100km/h time of 5.1sec, it is quick. It did feel a bit hard to modulate the throttle off idle at slow speeds from time to time on test, but really there is nothing else to fault about the powertrain performance.

Okay, the piped-in engine noise (selected through the infotainment screen) makes the V6 sound cool, but you can’t help but wish it isn’t a manufactured tone. The real engine acoustics are so well suppressed and smooth it can barely be heard or felt at all.

The claimed average fuel figure for the 2025 Genesis G80 Black is 10.7L/100km.

With about three-quarters of our driving being in urban areas, we averaged 14.0L/100km for the week. Genesis claims an urban average of 16.3L/100km, so it suggests that the Genesis figures are not too far off what you’d achieve in real-world driving.

First impressions are that the 2025 Genesis G80 Black is a very comfortable car to drive, with excellent noise suppression and ride comfort, while the steering is light but direct.

The G80 is a big and heavy sedan (it’s 2098kg and is just shy of two metres wide and five metres long) but feels smaller and lighter to drive than the specs suggest. It is easy to thread though the city canyons and blots out the rough patchwork of potholes and speed humps that mark many of Sydney’s suburbs. Get out on the highway and the G80 just lopes along.

While there are various drive modes that include suspension adjustment, leaving it in its Comfort setting proves the best scenario given its compromise between ride comfort and suspension control.

The only downer is the incessant and often inaccurate speed warning system, a common problem with several new cars. This speed warning can be easily disabled, though.

The quality of materials as well as the fit and finish are excellent, and the 2025 Genesis G80 Black is a very comfortable car to both drive and ride in.

The controls are all easy to find, the infotainment menus are quite simple and there are no irritating distractions to simply getting in and going.

There are three alternatives to access the centre infotainment screen – a circular controller on the centre console, buttons on the centre stack and the touchscreen itself (which was a bit too much out of a reach to be comfortable for me).

An ergonomic failure is that I had to sight which of the circular controls to aim for when changing gears for the first couple of drives given the gear selector is just behind the infotainment control within the centre console.

The rear seat has a lot of room for three occupants, and there are separate climate controls below two vents in the rear of the console. Door and map pockets and a centre armrest, plus controls to move the front passenger seat from the back are other plusses.

The boot, at 424 litres, is reasonably large and easily accessed, although wheel changing tools sit in a bag contained on the boot floor. There’s insufficient space under the boot floor to place it with the (80km/h space saver) spare wheel. Mind you, given the industry’s trend to not include any form of spare wheel, we’re not complaining about the G80’s set-up.

The 2025 Genesis G80 Black is unremarkable in the sense it does very little wrong.

Sure, the speed warning alerts can get tiresome and the fuel consumption looks a bit high for a modern large sedan, but there are many positives. It is comfortable, smooth, fast and exudes quality in an understated way.

In essence this is a very good luxury sedan with its biggest problem not with the car itself, but its brand recognition – or lack of against the long-established German, British or Japanese premium manufacturers.

2025 Genesis G80 Black at a glance:
Price: $125,200 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo petrol
Output: 279kW/530Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 11.0L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 250g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: Not tested

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