Apple’s MacBook Neo is an all-new laptop that delivers the magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price, making it even more accessible to millions of people around the world. MacBook Neo starts with a beautiful Apple design, featuring a durable aluminum enclosure in an array of gorgeous colors — blush, indigo, silver, and a fresh new citrus. Its stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display brings websites, photos, videos, and apps to life with high resolution and brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through everyday tasks, from browsing the web and streaming content, to editing photos, exploring creative hobbies, or using AI capabilities across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos,2 compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5.
Providing up to 16 hours of battery life, MacBook Neo allows users to go all day on a single charge. A 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio deliver crisp, immersive sound. MacBook Neo also features Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for comfortable and precise typing, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad with support for intuitive gestures, enabling smooth and precise control. Completing the MacBook Neo experience is macOS Tahoe, with powerful built-in apps like Messages, Pages, Calendar, and Safari; seamless integration with iPhone; Apple Intelligence; as well as broad compatibility with third-party apps. And starting at just $599 and $499 for education, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever, providing an unprecedented combination of quality and value.
Jordan McMahon for New York Magazine:
For the last five years, Apple’s M-Series MacBook Air has been my default recommendation for anyone who needs a new laptop. No other computer has a better balance of portability and computing power at a digestible price (the entry-level Air starts at $1,099). It features a top-notch display, all-day battery life, and specs that effortlessly handle everything in a typical workflow, from browsers with dozens of tabs to batch photo editing.
That’s changed now that there’s the MacBook Neo, the cheapest laptop Apple has released to date. It starts at $599 for the 256 GB model and has enough power to handle day-to-day tasks with ease. It’s more expensive than many budget Windows laptops but feels and performs far better than its price tag suggests. Hitting that price point requires a few compromises, but for most people, they’re well worth it for the best budget-friendly laptop you can get…
More impressive than the Neo’s reasonable price is the fact that it runs on the same chip as the iPhone 16 Pro’s, the nearly two-year-old A18 Pro. Between that and its relatively low amount of RAM — 8 GB, which is the bare minimum I’d recommend anyone get — the specs don’t appear to facilitate a serious workload.
It didn’t take long for the Neo to prove me wrong. During a typical workday, I’m usually running Slack, my note-taking app, a dozen tabs in the Brave browser, an RSS reader, Qobuz for music, and maybe a YouTube video or two. Even at my busiest, the Neo didn’t slow down until I pushed it to some absurd limits by opening a large batch of photos in the app Darkroom while running Slack, playing a few YouTube videos in the background, and opening over 25 tabs in my browser. That’s more than most people will be doing at any given time, but it does mean that you’re more limited than you would be on an Air…
You won’t find a better laptop for this price
Despite its shortcomings, the MacBook Neo is the best laptop you can get for $600. It’s as well designed and crafted as its far more expensive siblings and more than capable of handling a typical workload of web browsing, Slack, media playback, and document editing. For many people, that will be more than enough to make up for a slightly less feature-packed and powerful laptop. After all, it still feels like a Mac in all the ways that matter.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Apple can figure out how to make enough Neos to satisfy demand!
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Instead of, “Despite its shortcomings, the MacBook Neo is the best laptop you can get for $600.”, the article should have said, “The MacBook Neo is the best laptop, dollar for dollar, under $1,000.”
But it isn’t.
The problem is primarily Apple’s software, which is in many ways second class. The glassy OS is hard to read and is not very user customizable. The built-in apps are weak and pulldown menus hide key functions, requiring learners to have to study all the stupid key shortcuts. To get a decent video player or photo editor or a dozen other things where Apple used to be a leader, one has to go to a 3rd party. As horrible as it is to buy a standalone MS Office, it’s still way more powerful than anything Apple offers.
Apple is trying so hard to make a personal Mac into an extension of its iCloud rental service, it’s getting to be as bad or worse than Microsoft. Price alone can’t provide superior value. Apple needs to seriously upgrade its macOS and get some professional level 3rd party apps back onto the platform. The iOSification of the Mac has hollowed its value as a work tool, and as an entry level Mac.
The Neo will always remain more expensive than the disposable competition where users expect Google to “give” them everything for free. The problem is, Apple hasn’t been putting much effort into the value of macOS, instead they are trying to make all the fragmented operating systems look and feel alike. That makes the Mac weaker than it used to be. Look at the iOS store — mostly games and time wasters. Look at the Mac store — mostly superficial mini utilities and time wasters. The top quality professional apps are nowhere to be found.
Except one can often get a new MacBook Air for under $1000.