One of the most frequently asked questions I have received when I posted a picture of MacBook Neo was “why”? People who know me know I’m a power user, and my current laptop is a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Max CPU and 32GB of RAM. So seeing something like MacBook Neo in my hands may indeed trigger a question like that. Before I dig deeper, I just want to mention that it’s understandable for many people to forget that other user categories exist, and not everyone needs a top-of-the-line Pro machine.

And yes, my MacBook Pro might have been a top-of-the-line 5 years ago, and it still seems to be perfectly fine for working with pictures or editing videos in Final Cut. But then I ran Geekbench CPU test on it and on MacBook Neo, and imagine my shock seeing these numbers:
My current 16in MacBoo Pro with M1 Max and 32GB, has a single-core 2446 and multicore 12839 score.
In case of MacBook Neo with the last year’s A18 Pro CPU and 8GB of RAM, the results were 3544 for a single-core test and 9810 for multi-core test.

My MacBook Pro was probably around $3500 5 years ago. I am impressed with $600/$700 Neo, although I also know that pure CPU tests don’t reflect the whole performance, of course. Still, these numbers highlight that we shouldn’t discount MacBook Neo just because it’s cheap and has an iPhone chip inside.

The rumors about this cheap laptop with an iPhone chip had been circulating for probably a year, and I remained skeptical. Just a month ago, one could buy an M2-based MacBook Air for $650-700 on Amazon, so this rumored cheap (by Apple’s standards) laptop idea sounded dubious. There was also a professional aspect: I work in the area of virtualization on Macs, and these rumors about the iPhone chip were making me question whether virtualization would work on this new laptop (spoiler alert: it does, and surprisingly well). I was trying to make sense of things, and I could not until the actual unveiling of the MacBook Neo occurred. Now it all makes so much more sense.

Form factor

Form-factor wise, the MacBook Neo reminds me of the Intel-era MacBook Pro — I still have one 13in machine with a TouchBar (RIP). A similar aluminum enclosure and notch-less screen with a wider frame around the display definitely helps the comparison. I was hoping for something closer to the 12in MacBook, but it’s obvious that the cost-cutting efforts cannot bring ultra-portability here. But in any case, it’s still a solid aluminum case, a design that screams “Apple”, and Neo’s body projects a laptop that in general feels more expensive than PC counterparts at this price point.

Physical dimensions and the form factor of the MacBook Neo somehow feel just right for an affordable mass-market laptop, not too tiny (MacBook 12in), not too big (15/16in MacBook Air or Pro). It’s slightly smaller than the 14in MacBook Pro, and it hits a great combination of size and weight. I’ve read that it’s also easy to take apart and repair, which is great when you have a laptop in the hands of kids that will inevitably break things.

Display

Neo’s display will not win any awards, but it’s a decent 13-in screen with slightly weird 2408×1506 pixels resolution, and reasonable 500 nits of maximum brightness. The screen does not have a notch for a camera, and has a wider frame, with rounded corners at the top, and square corners at the bottom. Predictably, when talking about color reproduction, you won’t have stuff like DCI-P3, but it’s still going to be a very nice screen for its target audience. And since I’m talking about screens here, I’ll mention that MacBook Neo supports only one external display at 4K resolution at up to 60Hz. I’m pretty sure that the target audience will not be using multiple external screens with MacBook Neo. Another limitation related to display output is that on that 4K display, it will give only 1080p in Retina resolution, native 4K resolution (when everything is tiny), or some non-native blurry resolutions.

USB ports

And speaking of limitations, I want to mention that it’s not that MacBook Neo has only two USB-C ports, but also that only one of those ports (the one further from a user, if I remember correctly-) is a high-speed port. The other port is just a slow USB 2.0 480Mps nonsense, and no video output. All of this is a result of having an iPhone chip in the laptop, because it only supports a single 10Gbps port. To prevent users from confusing these ports, Apple has developed a system of notifications in macOS telling users which port to use for high-speed or slow-speed things.

Having probably a couple of developers, QA testers, and documentation writers on the team to provide this kind of functionality is not cheap, but I guess it’s still cheaper than offering the same speed in both ports, especially if Apple expects this machine to be a huge hit. The ports are unmarked, BTW, so users will only learn about this difference through the macOS notifications, which I personally find somewhat wild. Both ports can charge Neo, though. I think this will change in the next version of Neo, but users will need to remember this limitation.

Battery

MacBook Neo does not have MagSafe – an obvious cost-cutting measure, although I think if a target audience is younger kids, students, or older people, they are probably more likely to trip over a charging cord. Charging works through a USB-C cable, as I mentioned, and MacBook Neo comes with a small 20W charger, but other USB-C chargers work too (and more powerful chargers charge it faster). Battery life for Neo is fine, I guess — I did not run any major tests, but Apple claims 11 hours of web browsing, and I’d say with a heavier load, users realistically will see something around 8-9 hours of battery life.

Touch ID

MacBook Neo also does not have Touch ID in the cheapest version ($599 for regular consumers or $499 for educational users). Getting one requires a more expensive $699 model, although it also includes 512GB of storage instead of 256GB. I guess one can opt out for unlocking applications and a Mac using an Apple Watch, but they will quickly find themselves amused by the fact that the cheapest new Apple Watch costs almost half ($249) of their new MacBook Neo. So choosing a version with Touch ID is definitely a cheaper option, and those 512GB of storage will come in handy. I have a Mac mini with 256GB of storage, and I feel like I’m stressing about free space too much.
(No, really, think about it, a microcomputer on a wrist costs more than a laptop if you are looking at Apple Watch Ultra 3).

Keyboard

I spent some time typing on MacBook Neo’s keyboard and comparing it to my personal M1 MacBook Pro and my work M4 MacBook Pro. The key travel seems to be very similar, if not identical, but the feel overall was a bit different. I know that Apple is using the same scissor switch mechanism, but I thought (or imagined) that the resistance was slightly higher on the MacBook Neo’s keyboard. Maybe it feels like that because the plastic finish of the keys is different, but overall the keyboard is fine.

There’s however one important feature missing from the keyboard — a backlight. I’ve seen a lot of arguments online that were saying “just make the screen brighter so it shines on the keyboard”, but I tried it in the dark room, and it’s definitely not enough. Yes, everyone should know how to type on the keyboard without looking at it, but everyone should also be kind, yet here we are. I think keyboard backlight is probably a feature I’d miss the most with MacBook Neo.

Trackpad

The trackpad is different though! After many years of using Force Touch trackpads in laptops, where clicks/taps are simulated with haptic feedback, Apple again switched back to a trackpad with a physical clicking mechanism. Apple’s trackpads for many years are the best in class, thanks to the combination of hardware and software coming from one company. (I once installed Chrome OS Flex on one of the older MacBook Pros, and the way the trackpad behaved there was simply appalling, Google really massacred trackpad behavior there). Force Touch in trackpads is used for at least 10 years now, and while it was slightly unusual at first, we got used to it. So now this new “physical” trackpad feels strange, going back from the software-defined trackpads. It’s slightly deeper too.

This physical trackpad in MacBook Neo overall feels fine and also very close to Force Touch-based trackpads, but mechanical clicks definitely are louder than in Force Touch trackpads. But more importantly, with software-defined clicks and haptic feedback, there are no advanced clicks like Lookup by pressing harder on a trackpad. Apple suggests tapping with three fingers for data lookup, but I’m sure a majority of typical MacBook Neo users likely will not notice it. It’s a very good trackpad, just without haptic feedback – another victim of cost-cutting.

1080p built-in camera is fine, so are the side-firing speakers — they definitely lack the oomph and bass of the speakers in the latest MacBook Pros, but it’s a $600 laptop we are talking about here. Whoever needs better sound can go ahead and buy $550 AirPods Max headphones, to accompany their $600 laptop.

Performance

How does it feel to use one? I mentioned Geekbench scores in the beginning of the post, and I also mentioned that the scores don’t necessarily reflect the real-life use. Yes, MacBook Neo is likely going to be faster than M1 chips in quick actions like launching an app or opening a file, because A18’s performance cores beat M1’s cores. iPhone’s chips do not perform as well under a longer, consistent load, and the chip’s management systems start to suppress the chip’s output after a few seconds to prevent overheating (MacBook Neo does not have a fan). What does it mean for daily usage? Things like playing a game or exporting a video are likely going to be slower than in laptops with M-series chips. Converting a 1-minute video using Handbrake took 62 seconds on an M1 MacBook Pro, but 1 minute and 59 seconds on a MacBook Neo (using the same preset and everything). I was watching the average conversion speed gradually dropping to 40fps first, and then to 31fps, as the chip was trying to stay within its allowed energy consumption. I completely get such behavior in a smartphone where energy consumption and battery life are paramount, but in a laptop that may spend a lot of time plugged in, it just feels unnecessary. But if you are considering buying a MacBook Neo because it’s affordable and shows decent Geekbench scores, think again.

Also, 8GB of RAM. If someone says “performing under pressure”, and you think not about the Queen’s song, but about that chart in the Activity Monitor that shows how much memory currently running apps are using, MacBook Neo is definitely not for you. And while most of the “regular” apps are performing just fine, I’m not sure how long that will last, and how long Apple will be willing to optimize their macOS and apps to run decently on 8GB of RAM. But then, maybe Apple knows their users for MacBook Neo better than I do (they better!). So I think Apple understands that these users probably are going to be rarely exporting videos or performing longer continuous calculations. (Games, though, are still possible). And for these users, short performance bursts of opening an app, editing a document or a photo are perfectly fine and will be sufficient. It handles email, web and media consumption easily. But so is iPad!

Which raises an interesting question: if MacBook Neo poses a threat to iPads? iPad Air starts from $599 — same price as MacBook Neo, and a regular iPad starts from $349, but if you add a Magic Keyboard with a trackpad, then you end up at basically the same $598 price tag as MacBook Neo. And with macOS, MacBook Neo can do so much more than iPad (sorry, iPad, I love you, but this competition is not even close). But maybe Apple is fine with MacBook Neo cannibalizing iPad sales. Steve Jobs is known, among other things, for saying “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will”. And Apple might be fine with giving entry computing market to MacBook Neo, leaving iPad Air or Pro to more advanced audience. Also, parents who use cheap iPads to silence their kids are probably not going anywhere either.

Conclusion

All things considered, I still find MacBook Neo a very good value for someone who needs to do occasional things on a computer, without putting a lot of pressure on a CPU or memory (probably hundreds of millions of people). A first Mac for someone who discovered Apple through an iPhone, or a Mac in schools and colleges. I could easily imagine this as a computer for my mom, although she does not need portability, so a cheaper but more powerful M4 Mac mini will probably work better in her case. As I was thinking about MacBook Neo, what it can do, and who can be a perfect match for it, I thought about an iMac released back in 1997 – a computer that saved Apple. Priced at $1299 (over $2500 in 2026, adjusted for inflation), it was not the most powerful, the most expandable, or the cheapest computer on the market back then, lacking popular ports or a floppy drive. But it was approachable for regular people, easy to set up and use, and ended up shifting a paradigm about computers for regular consumers. I might be an optimist, but I feel like MacBook Neo has the potential to do the same not just for the generation that grew up with smartphones, but also for everyone else. Steve Jobs would approve.