When we recorded the latest episode of the TechRadar podcast we were coming in hot after the major new product announcements from Apple including the iPhone 17e, iPad Air M4 and its new budget MacBook.
Hearing that the affordable Apple laptop boasted an iPhone chip – the A18 pro which debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro back in 2024 — and only 8GB of unified memory (which we call RAM in the recording though it’s not the same as typical PC RAM) I just didn’t believe it would be that great. Even at its budget pricing I thought it would be a major let down.
Then we got to review the MacBook Neo and this thing blew us away. Our Computing Editor Matt Hanson called it “the best budget laptop you can buy right now.”
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Beautiful inside and out
The first success of this machine is its design.
There’s silver, black, pink, and a lime green which all look beautiful, and the vibrant colorways are felt throughout the whole machine — across its body, keyboard, accents, and even macOS elements.
Couple this with the silent fanless design, the already sleek macOS software, and a gorgeous 13-inch 2408 x 1506-pixel display, and the MacBook Neo oozes premium — something most budget machines simply can’t achieve.
While not as essential as performance (at least in my books) the look of something is important.
Case in point, I’m currently testing the Rokid AI glasses and while they boast solid AI abilities to rival Meta’s smart specs they just don’t share the Oakley or Ray-Ban pizazz. Even though they are cheaper the Rokid design just feels bland and plasticky, and it’s a serious let down that makes me much less inclined to use them.
The Neo, on the other hand, smashes the design — it’s a budget gadget you’ll be proud to get caught using — but it does succeed on the performance side of things too.
iPhone chip, MacBook performance
Without an M-series chip I didn’t believe Apple’s MacBook Neo could deliver a laptop experience, but as our review discovered, this machine delivers an uncompromised version of macOS.
You aren’t locked out of any apps or locked into iPhone or iPad software, and this machine can multitask a fair amount too. Obviously we have to temper expectations — 3D blender projects or serious 4K video editing aren’t what the Neo is for, as is to be expected in this price category.
But if you want to do typical productivity tasks, the Neo will be great. In fact, it boasts better Geekbench 6 scores than the MacBook Air M1, and it beats the MacBook Air M2 in single core performance — impressive feats for a phone chip.
This supports what we found in testing. Simpler tasks, even a little light gaming should be fine, but things like scientific simulations or hefty video editing will be slow with the Neo’s less impressive multicore performance and mere 8GB of unified memory (you may find this 8GB harms its future-proofing somewhat too).
And while this might not sound like an out and out victory for the Neo, you have to remember that cheap Chromebooks and Windows 11 machines come with much stricter limitations and worse performance. It’s not the best laptop ever made, sure, but the Neo is best in class if affordability is a priority.
And thus, Apple has wholeheartedly proved me wrong on the MacBook Neo, and you know what? I’m happy about it.
With costs rising, especially in tech, it’s nice to see some affordability victories — especially from a big brand like Apple. The Neo stuck the landing for students and folks in need of a cheap productivity machine.
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The best laptops for all budgets
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
