MacBook Neo review: I think Apple's next big hit is here

After Apple unveiled the MacBook Neo, two competing opinions started to spread in the tech world. The MacBook Neo, with its fun colors and killer price, would either disrupt the entire Windows laptop market, or it would be an under-powered waste of space with a measly 8GB of RAM.

After trying it for myself, I'm sticking with my first impression: If I were a Windows laptop that cost under $1,000, I'd be shaking in my boots.

The MacBook Neo brings the premium features of a MacBook — Liquid Retina Display, the intuitive macOS, a sleek aluminum design — to an entirely new market segment: the budget laptop.

A lot of commentators are hung up on the fact that this device only has 8GB of RAM, but in my testing, it performed surprisingly well. Available starting March 11 for $599 — a version with Touch ID and 512GB costs $699 — I have zero doubt that Apple is going to sell millions of these things. And if you qualify for the $499 education discount, this is truly a laptop with no viable competition, full stop.

What is the MacBook Neo? And who is it for?

The MacBook Neo is Apple's first true attempt at a budget laptop, and its first MacBook without an M-series chip since 2020. By raising prices on the new MacBook Air and Pro models, Apple made space for a new type of MacBook — the Neo.

To be clear, the MacBook Neo is not a laptop for professionals like myself. If you need to do heavy-duty photo or video editing, work with 3D modeling programs, or run open-source AI models on your device, you'll want that Air or Pro with the latest M5 chips.

Instead, the MacBook Neo is meant to be baby's first laptop, and I mean that as a compliment. It's a starter laptop you might buy for a high school or college student, who will eventually graduate to the Air or Pro, depending on their needs. But I also foresee another popular use case for this device — the party laptop.

Lots of people, including myself, use two laptops on a daily basis. You have your work laptop — in my case, a MacBook Pro — and then you have what I call the party laptop, which is often a simple Chromebook. When your work day is done, you put away the work laptop with your email and calendar and fire up your party laptop for streaming, music, casual browsing, and retail therapy. The MacBook Neo would be a perfect party laptop or Chromebook alternative, and while it lacks storage and RAM, Apple definitely didn't skimp on the entertainment features.

We gotta talk about the colors

No tech brand does design better than Apple, at least, not for the mass market. And the MacBook Neo comes in four colors: silver, indigo, citrus, and blush. Now, I will say, the blush is a very subtle pink. I say, if you're going pink, go pink. But in person, the citrus and indigo really pop. Apple also color-matches the keys to the aluminum finish. The Apple team is already having a lot of fun with this product launch, and I think shoppers will, too.

Let's look at the competition: Our No. 1 budget Windows laptop in 2026 is the Acer Aspire 16 AI, which costs $699. It's a good laptop, but it also has a flimsy hinge and plastic components. With the Neo, you get Apple's signature all-aluminum build quality, plus it's $100 cheaper, plus it comes in fun colors, plus it has Dolby Atmos speakers.

MacBook Neo: Performance and battery

To be sure, you're not going to edit a professional music video, mix a song, or work on an animation project with 8GB of RAM and the A18 Pro chip, first introduced for the iPhone 16 Pro. But don't believe what the haters are saying online: You can still do a lot with 8GB of RAM.

Here's what people are forgetting: Over the past few years, Apple has quietly made its MacBook Air and Pro laptops way overpowered for the average user. (The same is true for the iPad Air and Pro, as I explain in my M4 iPad Air review.) The original M1 MacBook was a legendary laptop that truly changed the game. Six years later, I know professional film editors who are still working on M1-era MacBook Pros, and have zero complaints about performance or speed.

As you can see in this chart, ever since Apple launched the M1 chip in 2020, the company's M-series silicon has progressed by leaps and bounds. At one point, it seemed like Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip might finally offer some true competition for Apple silicon, but then Apple released a new M chip.

Apple's M series chips have made such massive leaps in performance that you have to be a serious superuser to tax these devices to their limits. So, a simpler MacBook with less firepower makes sense for a lot of reasons. You don't need 16GB of RAM and an M5 chip to stream Netflix, make Word documents, and send emails.

But let's get specific. Let's talk benchmarks.

MacBook Neo review: Geekbench performance and stress tests

When testing a new laptop, Mashable runs a series of standardized tests, including the latest Geekbench 6 benchmark. The MacBook Neo received a multi-core score of 8,770, nearly identical to the 8,783 we recorded for the M1 MacBook Air. We also assessed its single-core performance, since that's a good measure of what we call snappiness, or how quickly it responds in everyday use. And this is where it gets interesting. The MacBook Neo achieved a single-core score of 3,484, significantly higher than most other laptops.

For reference, the Razer Blade 18 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor received a single-core score of 3,057. So, it's no wonder I've been able to do a surprising amount with the A18 Pro Chip.

I was able to edit a simple, cheesy video in Final Cut Pro using the MacBook Neo without struggling against the spinning wheel of death. Even when I layered video clips on top of each other and added a series of totally unnecessary transitions, the Neo handled the tasks just fine, as you can see for yourself:

For my MacBook Neo review, I also set up multiple Apple Shortcuts to perform complex tasks. I set up one Shortcut to automatically convert raw image files into JPEGs, crop them into a 16:9 aspect ratio, auto-adjust the color balance, hue, and saturation, and then save them in a specific folder. Using this Shortcut, the Neo edited a dozen massive image files with ease in under 30 seconds.

I set up another Shortcut to automatically convert all my video files into GIFs, also without problems. As I keep testing the Neo, I'm going to try Shortcuts that utilize Apple Intelligence and outside AI models, but Apple seems confident the Neo's A18 Pro chip and Neural Engine can handle it.

The MacBook Neo does have one big flaw

In stress testing the Neo, I did find its kryptonite, which won't be a surprise. Because the Neo lacks a Thunderbolt 4 port, it can only offer transfer speeds of up to 10Gb/s, compared to 40Gb/s with the latest MacBook Air. Likewise, the A18 Pro chip offers 60GB/s memory bandwidth, compared to 153GB/s memory bandwidth on the M5 Air.

The A18 Pro chip offers:

• 6-core CPU (2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores)

• 5-core GPU

• 16-core Neural Engine

The only time I encountered the spinning wheel of death? When importing or exporting large files. M-series MacBooks can multitask while doing this, but as you can see in my screen recording, the Neo really struggled to multitask while transferring large video files.

MacBook Neo battery life

Apple promises "all-day" battery life with the Neo. Specifically, the company promises up to 16 hours of battery for video streaming (and 11 hours for wireless web browsing). In our battery rundown test, we got exactly 14 hours and 50 minutes of battery performance.

If you want the MacBook Neo to last for an entire day of classes or a long travel day, I think it will be up for the challenge.

MacBook Neo: Display and speakers

The MacBook Neo has the same Liquid Retina display tech that you'll find on the $1,099 M5 MacBook Air and other Apple laptops. (The Neo's Display is 0.9 inches smaller than the Air, however.) It can offer up to 500 nits of brightness on its 13-inch, 2,408 x 1,506 resolution display. The color, clarity, and sharpness are as impressive as ever, particularly when you compare them to the average Windows laptop in this price range. It's a premium display in a budget laptop.

The MacBook Neo isn't simply a MacBook Air with a bunch of performance sacrifices, however. Apple actually improved the speaker system for the Neo (further solidifying it in my mind as the party laptop). Apple added two side-firing speakers, which you might mistake for SD card readers at first. The result is a speaker system that's surprisingly loud, clear, and compatible with Dolby Atmos.

MacBook Neo: What's missing?

The MacBook Neo does make both performance and hardware sacrifices to keep its price low, of course. Before buying the Neo, you need to understand what you're not getting:

• No 12MP Center Stage Camera (the Neo has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera)

• No True Tone technology

• No fast-charging capabilities

• No Thunderbolt 4 ports (it has one USB-C 3 and one USB-C 2 port)

• Only supports one external display

• $599 version only has 256GB of memory and no Touch ID (the $699 version has 512GB and Touch ID)

The MacBook Neo has a Magic Keyboard, but it's not backlit like you're used to. It also features a different trackpad. While it's extra-clicky, it's not quite as nice as a standard MacBook. That's hardly a breaking point, though.

Final thoughts: Is the MacBook Neo worth it?

I still want to do more testing, and I'll be updating my MacBook Neo review soon. My next test will be to set up some AI models on the device and see what the Neural Engine can and can't really handle. But as someone who works with a lot of video, photography, and AI tools, the MacBook Neo can handle quite a bit of my daily workflow. First-time buyers will also appreciate how easily it works with the iPhone and iPad. Your files can instantly sync across devices, and AirDrop fills any gaps.

Like I said, if you're comparing the $599 MacBook Neo with a similarly priced Windows laptop or Chromebook, it's going to be really hard to say no to the Neo. Unless Apple seriously stocked up, I wouldn't be surprised if this device sells out in the near future.