I can't recall a new Apple laptop that has made as many waves in the last few years as the MacBook Neo. And for good reason. It's phenomenal. It's far from a powerhouse and it's far too capable to be considered a toy. Calling this an entry-level laptop is a bit of a misnomer.
The Neo starts at just $499 for students, or $599 for everyone else. Not much memory and no M-based Apple Silicon chip, lame. The specs on paper seem mediocre at first glance:
- A18 Pro SoC with a 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU
- 8GB of unified memory
- 13" display with only sRGB color (not P3 like other MacBooks)
- Only 2 USB-C ports (one USB 3, one USB 2)
- No MagSafe port
- No SD card slot
- No keyboard backlighting
- Mechanical, not haptic, trackpad
- No Touch ID unless you select the $100 upgrade
- 256GB SSD (or 512GB with the upgrade)
- 4 colors including the popular Blush and Citrus
Neo in Blush and Citrus
The Neo is not meant for me. My other personal laptop is a MacBook Pro with 128GB of unified memory; the complete opposite of the Neo.
I still found myself drawn to the Neo though. There was, of course, the practical justification I gave myself: it's smaller and lighter than my 14" MacBook Pro, which makes it appealing for travel and casual use.1
But really, I was curious to see what the Neo could actually handle. It's all too easy for someone like me to dismiss a machine with only 8GB of memory and an old iPhone chip. I bought one the moment they were announced, along with another for my wife, to see how it would perform.
Even with all these technical limitations, this thing is 100% still a Mac. Sam nailed it in his blog post "This is not the computer for you":
What Apple put inside the Neo is the complete behavioral contract of the Mac. Not a Mac Lite. Not a browser in a laptop costume. The same macOS, the same APIs, the same Neural Engine, the same weird byzantine AppKit controls that haven’t meaningfully changed since the NeXT era. The ability to disable SIP and install some fuck-ass system modification you saw in a YouTube tutorial. All of it, at $599.
They cut the things that are, apparently, not the Mac. MagSafe. ProMotion. M-series silicon. Port bandwidth. Configurable memory. What remains is the Retina display, the aluminum, the keyboard, and the full software platform. I held it and thought, “yep, still a Mac.”
I've been using the Neo for a few days now, treating it like I would a daily driver. I installed Chrome, Cursor, Codex, Ghostty, Obsidian, Mimestream, NetNewsWire, GitHub for Mac, and a few other apps.
The first two signs that this wasn't my regular MacBook Pro were that installing apps—just dragging the app to the Applications folder—took a bit longer than expected, and that the effective screen resolution2 was a bit more limited than what I'm used to with the larger 14" MacBook Pro. Not a big deal. In fact, it's kind of nice to have a smaller screen to work on. It's the right size to keep most of my apps full-screen and just flip between them.
I've been using it for writing, coding, and general web browsing. The Neo has exceeded my expectations. I thought 8GB of unified memory on an iPhone chip would feel obviously sluggish. I'm definitely using all of the unified memory plus a few gigs of swap (3.5GB of swap used at this moment with a lot of things running). It feels fine. Maybe sometimes Spotlight isn't super responsive but honestly it's not that great on my MacBook Pro either.
I personally wouldn't want to toss my usual workload on it... 60MP Lightroom photo editing, Docker apps, Xcode, and keeping dozens of apps open indefinitely. But I think someone will be putting the Neo through that kind of workload and it could be done with some patience.
The only thing I really had to get used to was the mechanical trackpad. It feels like slightly more work to have to push down, especially in the corners. But the keyboard is still great, especially compared to all the PC laptop keyboards at a similar price point.
And if you're a real sleuth, it's pretty easy to tell the limitations of the sRGB display too with its reduced gamut and lack of HDR support.
But I am completely missing the point here with my nitpicking. This is a great machine not just for the price point, but period. This is a laptop that is meant to be used and is going to bring so many people to the Mac ecosystem for the first time.
It is currently the #1 best-selling computer on Amazon and, according to iFixit, the most repairable MacBook in 14 years.
