Review: Apple MacBook Neo

It's not the basic MacBook. Or the cheap MacBook. Or the mini MacBook. It's the MacBook “Neo,” meaning new or young—a fresh take on an old idea. Love the name or hate it, you likely see what Apple was attempting to communicate from a marketing perspective. It's meant to be a new kind of Mac for a new generation—perhaps an attempt to recapture a generation that's only been exposed to iPads and Chromebooks.

But is there anything new here, beyond marketing hype? That was the question in my mind as I pulled the laptop out of its box, gawking at how Apple made a lime green laptop look classy. Apple made a bunch of compromises that might feel like the company is nickel-and-diming its customers, taking advantage of the irresistible appeal of a $599 MacBook. While I understand that argument, my time with the MacBook Neo shows that it made cuts in the right places. Outside of a couple of missteps, the MacBook Neo is a true budget laptop, done the right way.

MacBook, Reborn

Photograph: Luke Larsen

The MacBook Neo is undeniably cute. In a world of dead-serious tech products that rarely stray from silver and black, the MacBook Neo doesn't take itself too seriously. There are four color options available: Silver, Citrus, Blush, and Indigo. They’re somewhere between the boldness of the iMac and the subtlety of the MacBook Air colors. The Citrus color is the brightest of the bunch. It’s somewhere between gold and lime green, depending on how the light hits it. It’s probably not what I’d choose for myself, but I can see this being a popular option.

I like that Apple committed to the colors by changing the colors of the keycaps, too. Regardless of which you choose, the keycaps are lighter than the rest of the device, which gives it a unique look. It makes everything feel lighter and more playful, which makes it easier to compare to a Chromebook. The rounder corners of the display and chassis add to that playfulness too.

Of course, Apple also takes the colors into the software, just like with the modern iMac. So, not only are my fingers surrounded by Citrus as I use the MacBook Neo, it’s also on the screen. The wallpaper features the color, of course, as do dialog buttons, folder icons, and highlighted text. It’s subtle, but it’s something only Apple can do, as the company owns both the hardware and software.

One of my favorite aspects of the MacBook Neo's design is the lack of a notch in the screen. I like small bezels as much as anyone else, but I really dislike the camera notch in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Here, Apple managed to do without it. The bezels are around an eighth of an inch thicker than the MacBook Air's bezels, and it also uses a smaller camera module, due to the lack of an ambient light sensor. So, no True Tone that automatically adjusts the color temperature of the screen—although it can still automatically adjust brightness based on the light in the room.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

As you expect in an Apple product, there's no compromises with build quality. It's a full-aluminum device that feels every bit as premium and sturdy as a MacBook Air. The MacBook Neo and MacBook Air are very close in size too. The Neo is marginally thicker than the Air at 0.50 inches, but they're the exact same weight at 2.7 pounds. The MacBook Air is slightly deeper and wider than the MacBook Neo, but not by as much as you might think given the difference in display size. Even though Apple calls both of them “13-inch” screens, the MacBook Neo is over a half-inch smaller diagonally. So, while the resolution of 2408 x 1506 means fewer overall pixels, the Neo maintains a high pixel density of 219 pixels per inch. The MacBook Neo is not only sharper than the competition, it's also brighter. Using a colorimeter, I tested it at 509 nits, which is twice as bright as many of the cheap laptops in this price range that top out at 250 or 300 nits.

The color reproduction does take a step back from what you get on the MacBook Air, though. Neither are good enough for more serious color work like the MacBook Pro, but the MacBook Air has a slightly more colorful display, hitting 89 percent of the AdobeRGB color space versus 73 percent on the MacBook Neo. If you don't know what a color space is, you won't need a more color-rich screen than this.

There are Windows laptops out there with comparable (or even better) specs, but none that are as sharp or bright as the MacBook Neo. Many use a 1920 x 1200 resolution screen, usually stretched across a larger 14-inch screen. Other comparable laptops, like the Asus Vivobook 14, come with low-quality screens that suffer from poor color reproduction. One of the best alternatives is the comparably-priced HP OmniBook 5, which has an OLED display. It has better colors and contrast than the MacBook Neo, but isn't as sharp or bright. Looking at the two side by side, I'd say the MacBook Neo has the more pleasant screen to use.

Some Limitations

The MacBook Neo's ports above, compared to the MacBook Air below.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

Like most people, when I first saw the price of the MacBook Neo, I immediately wondered what the catch was. If not the screen, then what else distinguishes this from the MacBook Air? As I discovered, there are lots of little corners that Apple cut to get the price down. It starts with the ports. On the MacBook Air, the headphone jack is located on the right side, across from the USB-C ports. On the Neo, the headphone jack is on the left side further towards the front (towards you), along with the two USB-C ports. This is a really unusual location, right next to the stereo side-firing speakers. But I'll take an awkward audio jack versus none at all.

As for those two USB-C ports, both can be used to charge the device, though only the USB-C 3 port has DisplayPort built in to connect to an external display. Fortunately, there are some software alerts built into macOS Tahoe that warn you when you’re using the wrong USB-C port. It’s really smart. Once you find the right port, though, you’ll find that the system can only handle external displays up to a 4K resolution at 60 Hz. All MacBooks going back to the M1 MacBook Air have been able to handle up to a 6K resolution.

The USB-C ports are disappointingly out of date and run at speeds that will be noticeable on tasks like transferring files to a thumb drive. Unfortunately, these ports also aren’t labeled. The back one (closest to the hinge) is USB 3, the previous-generation standard, which can do a respectable 10 Gbps. The other USB-C port has transfer speeds that have not been current since 2001. This port really shouldn't be showing up on a brand-new laptop, even a budget model. For perspective, Apple's 2020 MacBook Air has a Thunderbolt port that’s 80 times faster.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

It also uses a mechanical trackpad rather than one with haptic feedback. Fortunately, I’m happy to report that the MacBook Neo’s multitouch trackpad is still solid. The click is a bit loud, which is annoying, and the surface doesn't feel quite as smooth as on the MacBook Air. But it's good enough. The keyboard here is excellent, as I expected it to be.

There are two big caveats with it, though. First, there’s no keyboard backlighting. It’s one of those features that Mac users probably rarely think about, except when they really need it. I don’t see it as a make-or-break feature for most people, though. Secondly, the base model unit I reviewed didn’t come with Touch ID, so the only way to log in or use Apple Pay is with an old-school password. I get that they’re trying to save every penny, but Touch ID is already the most basic biometric authenticator, so this feels like a blast from the past. This is one of my least favorite compromises Apple made on the MacBook Neo. (Touch ID is built into the keyboard on the $700 configuration which comes with a 512-GB SSD.)

The webcam and speakers on the MacBook Neo are both small downgrades from the MacBook Air as well. While the camera is 1080p, it doesn’t have the same 12-megapixel sensor as you’ll find in the latest MacBook Air. That’s why you get a bit less depth in the image, and the processing tends to overshoot the brightness. It's still a better camera than what’s on most laptops at this price that I've tested, though.

A Phone Chip in a MacBook?

Photograph: Luke Larsen

The MacBook Neo is powered not by an M-series chip designed for Mac, such as the M5 or M4, but instead by an iPhone chip. That’s right—under the hood of the MacBook Neo is the A18 Pro, which also appears in the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. It’s the most powerful mobile chip Apple has, but this is the first time it's appearing in a MacBook. Pair that with a fanless design and the limitation of 8 GB of RAM (which can’t be upgraded in any way), and I was a bit skeptical about how the MacBook Neo would perform.

When you look at the raw benchmarks, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I’m not talking about comparing it to top-of-the-line chips coming out in 2026. I happen to be testing the aforementioned HP OmniBook 5 right now too, which is powered by the Snapdragon X chip and is currently cheaper than the MacBook Neo. It's a perfect comparison to see if the A18 Pro really works as a proper laptop chip.

The MacBook Neo’s advantages in this comparison are in single-core CPU and GPU performance, which have always been the strengths of Apple Silicon. That translates to a very snappy-feeling device. Applications open fast, animations are fluid, and lighter games perform surprisingly well. Don’t bother with Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur’s Gate 3 (although you better believe I tried), but it handles simple Apple Arcade titles about as well as your phone does.

I did spin up Oceanhorn 3, a new, graphically intense game in Apple Arcade that Apple has been touting. Unfortunately, the play experience was pretty rough. It struggled to play smoothly at image quality that I'd call “good enough.” That was disappointing. And yet, as seen in the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light benchmark I used, the MacBook Neo still earned a 40 percent better score than the HP OmniBook 5. Graphics have been the biggest weakness of the Snapdragon X chips as a whole.

On the other hand, the Snapdragon X, which launched in early 2025, has a substantial lead over the A18 Pro in multicore CPU performance. It’s not close, either. The Snapdragon X in the HP OmniBook 5 is 47 percent faster in multicore performance as tested in Cinebench 2026. For any heavier tasks that the system can spread across cores, Qualcomm's same-priced Windows laptops significantly outperform the Neo. That includes compiling code, rendering video, and running complex formulas in Excel, but also something as simple as heavy multitasking where you're running two complex applications simultaneously.

As a whole, the problem of performance with the MacBook Neo isn't the A18 Pro. It's storage performance and memory. The speed of the laptop's SSD is considerably slower than the competition. With average write speeds of around 1,350 megabits per second (and 1,450 read speeds), this is pre–Apple Silicon levels of SSD performance, meaning large downloads feel slow, as does working with those large files. It's about half as fast as the SSD on the M1 MacBook Air, for reference.

But the biggest point of contention with the MacBook Neo's performance is the restriction to just 8 GB of unified memory. My simple workflow on a MacBook Air, which involves a couple dozen Chrome tabs, Slack, and Spotify, would normally eat up around 12.75 GB of memory. At idle on the MacBook Neo, I noticed in the Activity Monitor that the system takes around 4 GB just to run the operating system with no applications open. That is a recipe for disaster. MacOS is quite efficient at using something called "swap memory" as needed to avoid slowdowns or crashes due to limited RAM. But they will happen if you push the system a bit. I found that limit by piling on 20 or so Safari tabs, multiple streaming YouTube videos, Spotify, a few applications, and an open video call. At that point, things started to really slow down. My RAM usage was approaching 7 GB, and the Swap Used memory was nearing a full gigabyte. That's going to be more than the average person is purposefully using, but using the MacBook Neo means being more mindful of what's open in a way that you never have to do with a MacBook Air.

This limited RAM may become an even larger problem in the future. MacOS has only grown more memory-intensive as it’s evolved, and the more AI is built into subsystems and background software, the bigger a problem 8 GB of RAM will become. A good example is Spotlight, which recently got updated with lots of new features and takes around 170 MB of RAM in the background at all times.

Our initial battery tests have been good. I ran a local video playback test for 13 hours, and it only drained the battery to 50 percent. That's with the screen set at a standard 100 lux, which is around 40 percent of the full brightness of the display. I'll need a few more days to get a fuller picture of what battery life looks like and update this review with the results.

Who Is It For?

This might make you wonder if the MacBook Neo is underpowered. As a whole, I'm guessing not. For years now, I've been skeptical that most people are even using the full power of the latest Apple Silicon in the MacBook Air. The M5 has powerful graphics and top-of-the-line CPU performance, and that's largely wasted on people who exclusively operate out of just a handful of browser tabs. That's a very large demographic. If that's you, you'll likely enjoy using the MacBook Neo and not be bothered by the limitations. Pay attention to what apps you have open, and you'll be fine.

The comparison that people are most interested in is how this stacks up in Apple’s own lineup. After all, the MacBook Air M1 was continuing to be being sold for $650 (or even $600 during sales) through Walmart, and these weren’t refurbished or used. But the A18 Pro is at least equivalent in performance to the M1 in most ways, and even surpasses it. There's a number of trade-offs between the M1 MacBook Air and the MacBook Neo to consider beyond performance, of course. They have equivalent displays, but the M1 MacBook Air has better storage performance, faster ports, and a better trackpad. Meanwhile, the Neo has a higher-resolution webcam, a smaller footprint, and a more modern overall design. Overall, I'd take the Neo.

But buying the Neo does mean you'll get frustrated at some point. Maybe it's when you're trying to transfer a large file from an external SSD, or when you're trying to use it at night and can't see the keyboard, or when you tire of typing your password in repeatedly, or when you push the system and hit some stutters from the lack of memory. It'll be something different for everyone, but it's bound to happen at some point. But at that exact moment, you'll also remember the $500 you saved by not buying a MacBook Air and conclude it was probably worth it. That's high praise for a budget-level product. Ultimately, it's what makes the MacBook Neo one of the best budget laptops you can buy right now—despite its flaws.