MacBook Neo: Apple Disrupts the Consumer PC Market
Summary
The MacBook Neo is a good small laptop for general purpose computing, and an astonishing value. A MacBook that runs MacOS and MacOS apps at $599 is disruptive, finally hitting the price points that drive the volume segment of Windows PCs. Apple has reset the bar for how nice a budget laptop needs to be. Competitors may find it hard to respond in the current memory environment, but they will have to or they will cede more profitable segments of the market to Apple in the future.
Is a Phone Chip Fast Enough for MacOS?
The MacBook Neo comes in two versions with a significant education discount: $599 for 256GB storage or $699 for 512 GB storage plus TouchID fingerprint reader on the power button. In both cases, anyone with an education email address can knock $100 off, putting the entry point for the MacBook Neo at just $500. One of the factors in getting the price down was using a mobile processor, the A18 Pro from the iPhone 16 Pro, rather than one of Apple’s M-series.
Apple Silicon is no joke: the A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo with 8 GB of RAM is as fast or faster than most sub-$1000 laptops for basic computing tasks. GeekBench 6 results bear this out,* with single-core CPU results averaging 3604 in my tests, 36% faster than a MacBook Air M2. Multi-core CPU and GPU performance lags the M2 but still matches some Intel Lunar Lake laptops on battery power. There are certainly more powerful processors out there – Apple sent over the new $1100 MacBook Air M5 as well – but consumers buying a $600 laptop aren’t looking at GeekBench and Cinebench scores, they want to know that it will be fast enough for writing, social media, web browsing, social media, light content creation, and cloud-based AI. It is. I have been using the MacBook Neo to research and write this report, and I have had no issues with Microsoft Word, Mail, Microsoft Outlook, a dozen open tabs in Safari (including YouTube, Amazon Music, and Google Gemini), Canva, and Photos. All at the same time.
There are limitations that are due to the 8 GB of RAM than the processor. MacOS has been optimized to deal with limited RAM – most M-series Macs started with 8 GB of RAM just two years ago. Still, the MacBook Neo wouldn’t be my first choice for AAA gaming, editing video, or compiling code even though it can actually do all of these things, as multiple YouTubers have demonstrated. In my limited tests so far I haven’t been able to fill the SSD and then leave 300 tabs open in Chrome, but that might be a scenario where the MacBook Neo’s memory paging might struggle. We’ll also have to see if it can handle on-device AI once Apple ships Gemini-based Apple Intelligence. But for the types of things that people buy $600 laptops to do, the MacBook Neo isn’t just acceptable, it’s great.
It Feels More “Small MacBook” than “Budget Laptop”
Unboxing the MacBook Neo is the first sign that this is a MacBook, not a budget laptop. The packaging is the same premium pressed cardboard and paper-based pull tabs as the $6000+ MacBook Pro M5 Max. The MacBook Neo uses the same aluminum unibody as its larger siblings and there is no flex in the case or display panel. It’s extremely thin and flat with rounded edges and weighs in at 2.73 lbs./1.23kg. A 20W charger and cloth-wrapped charging cable are included. It runs the same MacOS as other MacBooks and while Liquid Glass has its issues, the MacBook Neo comes with no bloatware, ads, or pop-ups.
The MacBook Neo fits into Apple's software and services ecosystem -- which many consumers are already using thanks to exposure to iPhones, iPads, AirPods, and even Apple Watches. When you start FaceTime for the first time it offers to use your iPhone’s camera instead of the included 1080p webcam. When I put in my AirPods Pro 3, audio immediately switched over to them, no pairing or setup required. The Apple ecosystem is a nice place to be.
Apple offers the MacBook Neo in four colors: Silver, Blush (pink), Citrus (greenish/yellow), and Indigo. Apple is doing a subtle thing with its colors: “serious” devices get monochromatic tones, while more accessible products get color. I don’t personally like this — I’d love a (Product) Red MacBook Pro M5 Max, and Motorola has shown that you can sell premium smartphones with actual color — but Apple’s strategy is deliberate and it’s working. Apple sent me the Citrus variant. The chassis color shifts a bit depending on the light and looks like a cheerful lime, while the keycaps are a color-matched light yellow/beige. Unlike the more expensive iMac, the MacBook Neo’s power supply and cable are not color matched; Apple needed to keep costs down somewhere.
The screen is sharp and bright getting up to 500 nits. It is reflective with good color saturation off axis. I kept the brightness slider just under the mid-point in my well-lit office and at the local pizza store I use for testing devices, soliciting feedback, and getting lunch. At just 13” in a 16:10 layout, the display is on the small size (older users will want to go into Accessibility and bump up the font size a notch). There are stereo speakers on the sides of the chassis that play clean and loud enough for nearfield listening. Instrument separation for music is fair. Upper bass is present and not overly distorted. This is not a MacBook Pro 16 with six speakers, rich tones, and useful mid-bass, but the MacBook Neo’s speakers will do a credible job for YouTube, TikTok, and Zoom if you don’t want to use Bluetooth or the 3.5mm headphone jack. There are a pair of microphones that sound shockingly good in a quiet room, adding just a hint of warmth and a minimum of distortion.
Apple certainly cut some corners to hit its price, but the choices are well considered, and average consumers shouldn’t mind much. There are only two USB-C ports and only one is USB 3.0, the touchpad physically clicks, and the keyboard lacks backlighting – a quality-of-life feature that consumers are likely to miss the most. You also have to plug the USB charging cable all the way in and try not to trip over it; MagSafe is not here. (MagSafe isn’t on any competing Windows or Chromebook, either.) TouchID is only available on the 512 GB version for $100 more; this may be a net positive for some families and educational environments where laptops are passed around to multiple users, but for individuals it’s an upcharge. Apple also saved money by using a 36.5Wh battery – the MacBook Neo isn’t heavy, but I’m not sure why it weighs as much as it does given the lack of a cooling system and how small the battery is. However, the A18 Pro and small LCD display sip power; in my first charge cycle I got around 10 hours of mixed use. This is not Apple’s longest-lasting laptop, but more than enough for a full day on campus or in coffee shops away from a power supply.
Disrupting the PC Industry
The MacBook Neo presents both short- and long-term challenges to the PC industry. In the short term, Apple will gain market share in a space where it hadn’t participated before. For PC vendors, $600 - $800 isn’t where the profits are — that would be the premium, gaming, and workstation segments — but PC OEMs who ignore entry price points have trouble getting the volume they need to be competitive on component prices, or they simply aren’t visible to most consumers at retail. Dell discovered this the hard way over the past year when it rebranded its PCs and then pivoted back hard, starting with the relaunched XPS. There are still lower price points below $600 for laptops, but it’s even harder to find margin there – and for educational buyers, Apple is starting at $500.
The MacBook Neo will be enormously popular with students, cash-strapped adults, and anyone just looking for basic computing, particularly if they already own an iPhone. The MacBook Neo will almost certainly cannibalize a portion of iPad Air and MacBook Air sales, but Apple is fine with that. It waited to enter the sub-$1000 market until it could do so profitably, so Apple will make money on each MacBook Neo today, while gaining market share for MacOS that will pay ecosystem dividends down the road. That’s the longer-term challenge: the MacBook Neo will draw some mainstream consumers and younger customers into the Apple ecosystem and they will never leave. When they upgrade, they’ll buy a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. That will put pressure on the more profitable performance and gaming Windows laptop segments.
Conversely, I don’t expect the MacBook Neo to impact the bulk of today’s Chromebook market, ironically because Apple’s ecosystem isn’t as fully developed in education as Google’s. MacOS and even iPadOS don’t have the software lock-in that Google does with web-based, centrally managed education apps and services. There is also the reality that for school districts, a $500 MacBook Neo is still almost double the price of some of the nearly-disposable Chromebook SKUs that they buy in bulk. Those Chromebooks are so cheap because they don't need much RAM or storage, and they choose terrible cases and displays. But the parents? Some of them will buy MacBook Neos instead of Chromebooks for their children.
How PC Vendors Can Respond
Apple’s marketing makes unflattering comparisons between the A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo and Intel Core i5 processors in equivalently priced Windows laptops with worse performance and battery life. Not all budget laptops are quite that bad, and Intel’s silicon is improving dramatically (though only at higher price points for now). However, if Apple’s better power-per-watt Arm architecture is the problem, Qualcomm and MediaTek have answers. Price is still going to be an issue, as the 16GB minimum RAM needed for snappy Windows performance (and Copilot+ PC designation) is a cost problem that is only going to get worse. Still, you can build a laptop around a Snapdragon X or Snapdragon 8 series and run Windows 11 on it. MediaTek’s Dimensity and Kompanio lines don’t run full Windows, but they could, and the Kompanio 910 is already used in the best Chromebooks from Lenovo and Acer that are within $50 of the MacBook Neo’s price.
The memory crisis makes it harder for competitors to respond, but the bigger challenge may be to match Apple’s design, materials, and build quality at this price point. PC OEMs do lavish care on their premium models: Lenovo, Microsoft, ASUS, and HP all have thin-and-light models with impressive designs, premium packaging, and stunning OLED displays. However, Apple is resetting the bar for how nice a budget laptop should be. Many budget laptops are designed by PC vendors’ assembly partners to hit a price point, not by the in-house design staff aiming at making a brand statement. Laptop displays are typically dim and dismal below $800. Keyboards and trackpads are noticeably worse than their more expensive siblings – and these are interface elements buyers touch thousands of times a day. That is going to have to change.
Focused design at scale. Windows OEMs are going to have to spend more time and money on industrial design and materials and cut the number of SKUs to get some economies of scale. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 3 was headed in this direction with a metal chassis, considered design, and a solid display and keyboard …before it was canceled.**
Arm designs with better performance-per-watt-per-dollar. Until Intel can make low power, lost cost silicon, Qualcomm design wins should increase. Microsoft and Qualcomm will have to continue investing in long tail native app conversions. Most apps work, but if some apps and utilities running in emulation are slow even with 16GB of RAM and full-fat Snapdragon X Elite; for low cost Snapdragon X laptops, they’ll need to be native.
Focus on OOBE (Out Of Box Experience). No matter how tempting the affiliate revenue, vendors competing with Apple’s MacOS experience have to stop shipping bloatware, unnecessary antivirus subscriptions, and pop-ups. That goes for Microsoft, too: no ads in Windows, and stop with the pop-over panels full of unwanted click bait. Widgets are fine but make it obvious how to make them all go away if consumers prefer less visual clutter.
Go big(ger). One way that Apple is preventing the MacBook Neo from fully cannibalizing the MacBook Air is with size. The MacBook Neo is small, and if Apple’s history with the iPhone SE and e lines is a guide, the MacBook Neo will remain fairly compact for a while. If there is a MacBook Neo 14.5”, you can be certain it will come later and cost at least $200 more. For now, a premium $600 Windows laptop that is 13.5” or 14” would provide differentiated value.
Make the next ChromeOS good at the basics. Microsoft is not the only laptop OS competitor. According to Gemini, the next version of ChromeOS will be built on top of Android OS with deep AI integration and agentic features. Google needs to articulate this vision with specifics as soon as possible, and it needs to incentivize developers to create rich apps for it. However, as tempting as it will be to integrate amazing AI capabilities that MacOS doesn’t have, Google needs to focus on the basics: stability, consistency, windowing, mouse/keyboard integration, and extensive device driver support. Then its hardware partners will need to provide laptops that clear Apple’s new budget experience bar, just like their Windows counterparts.
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* I tested the MacBook Neo using GeekBench 6 Pro on battery in the equivalent of “auto” mode as there is no “performance” mode. Results are averaged after three runs:
CPU single-core: 3604
CPU multi-core: 9099
GPU CL: 19809
CPU Metal: 31447
**I tested all three Surface Laptop Go versions over the years. The first was woefully under spec’d but hit the $550 price point; the most recent version 3 was a bit better but cost $800 and battery life on the Intel silicon was middling.