Apple’s MacBook Neo is a fascinating device, but its price rise hasn’t done it any comparative favours. Does it still tilt towards being good value?
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Superb battery life | Physical build doesn’t ‘feel’ like a MacBook |
| Good for everyday app usage | A18 Pro performance still trails years-old MacBook Air models |
| Apple’s cheapest MacBook is still its cheapest | But it’s far from the cheapest laptop, and it’s more expensive than it used to be |
Score: 3.5/5
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Buy The Apple MacBook Neo! | Buy On Amazon |
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In this review
Apple MacBook Neo Specifications
Apple MacBook Neo Design
Apple MacBook Neo Performance
Apple MacBook Neo Battery
Apple MacBook Neo Verdict
Ethical disclaimer: The Apple MacBook Neo used in this review was loaned to me by Apple, and back to Apple it shall go. Lots of sites and reviewers omit disclosure, or bury it at the base of an article at best.
I’m not built that way, and feel strongly that letting people know this kind of thing is vital for the future of ethical journalism.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Apple’s pitch for the MacBook Neo is that it containts (and I quote) “The magic of Mac at a surprising price.”
I honestly thought we were long past the phase where Apple described everything as “magic”, but leaving that bit of marketing nonsense aside, the price of the MacBook Neo, back when it launched was a revalation.
It’s been a while since Apple had anything in a computing sense under $1,000 with a display attached, after all, so the prospect of a “MacBook” for as little as $899 had a lot of potential appeal.
But, well… you probably already know this, but that’s not what you’ll pay for a MacBook Neo now.
At the end of June, Apple raised the prices across its MacBook lines (and iPads too), pushing what was an $899 MacBook Neo to a new starting price of $1049.
If you wanted the model with higher storage and TouchID, that jumped from $1,099 to $1249.
So much for the sub-$1,000 MacBook, then… but is Apple’s “cheapest” MacBook still a worthy buy?
For their own reasons, Apple didn’t send me a review unit until after the price rise was in full effect, so it feels quite natural to assess it at its higher price point, warts and all.
Design
From the outside, the MacBook Neo certainly looks like a smaller MacBook, and that’s especially true for the Silver model that Apple sent my way. You can get the MacBook Neo in a range of more eye-catching colours, though here your own sense of taste may play a large role.
I do rather like the look of the Indigo model in darker blue, but the Citrus model is… wow, it sure is something, but the terms I might use to describe it aren’t exactly family friendly. Let’s just say that I really find it unpleasant and move on, shall we?
If you’re familiar with the general MacBook line – I have more than a few decades of that under my belt for my sins – it becomes clear that one of the ways that Apple’s kept costs low here is in the construction. While it does have an aluminium frame, the rest of the construction is on the distinctly plastic side.
Keyboard layout is Mac standard, and at least it’s not that terrible “butterfly” keyboard they had a few generations back.
It gives it a feel that’s not quite “MacBook” in the 2026 sense, because while Apple hasn’t changed up MacBook design in any major ways for quite a few generations now, it’s always kept a premium feel. This doesn’t quite have that.
How much does this matter? It depends on your needs and your frame of reference.
If you were coming to the MacBook Neo from an existing MacBook Air, it’s going to feel cheap, and you’re likely to think – as I did, for a period – that it kind of feels like what a knock-off MakBuuk Nao that you might get from a dodgy online seller would feel like. There’s a definite difference in feel and therefore experience as a result.
“…it kind of feels like what a knock-off MakBuuk Nao that you might get from a dodgy online seller would feel like…”
However it is worth putting it in context. At that original $899 price, and to a slightly lesser extent (though not by as much) what you’ll get in a Windows laptop or Chromebook isn’t likely to feel much different to this. At the cheaper end of town, cheaper components and build standards frolic, and that should surprise nobody.
My own slightly dated frame of reference here has to be the very old-school White or Black plastic MacBooks of circa 2008.
I had one of those back in the day, and while it was undeniably plastic in feel, it did last me a good long time under a significant and sustained workflow. There’s hope at least that the MacBook Neo should be able to do likewise.
There are relatively few other surprises here; the 13 inch 2408×1506 pixel LCD display is fair within this price class, even with the price rise, but it’s not as sharp as you’ll get on a comparable MacBook Air, as you might expect. The included 1080p “FaceTime” camera is workable for meetings and quick video chats, but not quite what you’d want for dedicated video shooting, and like other MacBooks there’s no included privacy shutter.
Apple’s cheaper MacBook Air lines – back when they were “cheaper”, because they jumped up in price at the end of June too – were often slighty nerfed in terms of connectivity, and the same is true for the MacBook Neo too.
From the side you’ll find dual USB-C ports, but these are not paired; one is a full USB 3 port capable of up to 10Gbps data transfer, while the other is USB 2 only at a maximum of 480Mbps. A quick test with a flash drive plugged into alternate ports can quickly identify one is the laggard.
Not all USB-C ports are the same. Can you spot which one is the slower port?
OK, spoilers, it’s the one closer to the front of the MacBook Neo. You could also work this out by trying to connect up a monitor, because that will only happen from the rear USB-C port too.
Like every Apple Mac you can buy these days, the MacBook Neo isn’t internally updateable once you’ve purchased it, but this does include one potentially significant physical design feature.
Want a TouchID sensor? That costs extra.
If you buy the upper tier $1,249 MacBook Neo, you get a TouchID sensor built into the power button. That’s the same approach as a MacBook Air, but if you buy the “entry level” $1,049 model, it’s notably absent.
Performance
The lower price point of the MacBook Neo… well, the originally lower price point, but let’s move on… means that you don’t get a lot of configuration choices to play around with outside of outside colours.
Every MacBook Neo comes with 8GB of RAM on board, and the only differences between the 512GB and 256GB models come with the inclusion or lack of TouchID. There’s no fancy screen differences, no battery or port differences… it’s just storage and TouchID, and that’s all.
Of course, the interesting story here is around the fact that the MacBook Neo doesn’t run on one of Apple’s existing M series “Apple Silicon” ARM processors, even though it could have (in theory) debuted with an older M1 or M2 chip.
Instead, it packs in an Apple A18 Pro chip under its keyboard, which means that in one sense, it’s a really big Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max with a bigger battery but a markedly worse camera system.
A very big iPhone… with slightly more in the way of screen real estate and ports. And a keyboard.
That’s… a choice on Apple’s part, and one I can only guess relates to build efficiencies and costing for using what was effectively a “phone” processor in a MacBook.
Apple’s not the first to go down this kind of route, of course. Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops have been a category for years now, but where Microsoft’s long had to deal with some interesting quirks around getting x86-powered code running on ARM chips, Apple’s shift to full ARM for its M-series Macs six years ago – my, how time flies! – means that there should in theory be a whole lot less translation work for the A16 Pro to handle, excluding much older “Rosetta 2” emulation for x86-based macOS apps.
All of which is interesting in a geeky fashion, but what does it add up to in terms of app performance?
Let’s have a look at the benchmarks, comparing a current model MacBook Air, the MacBook Neo and a MacBook Air M2 (that I personally own) using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
While the Neo trails the pack here, that 100% should be expected against the MacBook Air M5, given that its pricing has expanded as well, with pricing that’s essentially twice that of the MacBook Neo!
What’s more interesting to me here is the comparative performance against the much older MacBook Air M2. I’d already noted in my comparative review of the MacBook Air M5 that while my older M2 was definitely getting creaky around the edges, the benchmark results that I’d seen externally suggested that it wasn’t quite going to be time to replace it with a MacBook Neo.
One of the more interesting areas where Apple has really pushed forwards in mobile phone terms is in GPU performance, given some of the AAA games that can play directly on an iPhone.
Does that performance translate to GPU performance of use to MacOS users?
Let’s take a look using Geekbench 6’s GPU tests:
Again it’s close with the M2 if we’re looking at Apple’s own Metal API, but markedly less so otherwise.
Benchmarks are interesting in a comparison sense, but then there’s everyday usage, and here the MacBook Neo does… mostly… feel like a slightly slower version of my existing and personally owned MacBook Air M2.
In its time the MacBook Air M2 was a bit of a rocket ship, but that was four years ago, and time moves on.
What’s more interesting to me here is what might happen in the future for both systems.
The OS upgrade puzzle (and a small diversion, but maybe not)
When I’m reviewing any tech product, I’m always keen to find out how long it’s likely to be supported for.
Seriously, the number of times I’ve been in a briefing for a new phone and had to ask about software updates is… it’s a big number, and I know more than a few PR people who 100% expect to hear it from me each and every time.
Put the price of your product up after you launch it? I’m even more keen to know.
Apple never really talks about how long it’ll support a given Mac (or iPhone or iPad or anything else “Apple” for in terms of future OS upgrades. You just get what you get, and Apple says that’s that.
What it does say on the record is when it considers given items to be either “vintage” or “obsolete”, and these markers often coincide with when the software updates also stop flowing.
As per Apple, products are “vintage” as per Apple under the following definition:
“Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.”
(Source: https://support.apple.com/en-au/102772)
As for “obsolete” (which to be fair to Apple largely resolves around spare parts, not really software), here’s the definition, just because I know you’re curious, given you’re still reading this:
“Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago.”
(Source: https://support.apple.com/en-au/102772)
By that set of definitions, I’ve got around 3-4 years before the MacBook Air M2 is “vintage”, and 5-7 years before it becomes “obsolete”.
Where this gets interesting to me is that the M2 series is demonstrably a little bit more powerful than the MacBook Neo. Not by much… but it is.
Apple’s intent (to my understanding) is that the MacBook Neo should get updates through to its usual schedule, which likely means that same 5-7 year period or so after it stops selling them, depending on when the MacBook Neo 2 lands… and only Apple knows that for sure.
What that means is that it’s entirely feasible that Apple may declare M2 (or even M1 systems, not that much less powerful than a Neo) to be obsolete and no longer able to get OS updates in the same time as it offers updates to MacBook Neo owners.
Is that fair?
No, I don’t think so, and while this is supposition, Apple does like money and I have my doubts that it’ll suddenly come over all generous and extend MacOS life support for older Mac owners who have systems with similar power levels as the MacBook Neo… I suppose time will tell.
Battery
While its heart might be ripped straight out of an iPhone 16 Pro Max, Mola Ram style, the size of the MacBook Neo means that it can accommodate a lot more battery power than an iPhone can.
Laptop power is always going to vary depending on the apps you choose to run on them, and Apple’s standard for the longest time has been to describe battery life in terms of typical app usage. For the MacBook Neo, that equates out to, as per Apple:
“Up to 16 hours video streaming / Up to 11 hours wireless web”
I’m always cautious around any figure with an “up to” qualifier. Technically you can run for a single second, and that’s “up to” infinity, even if it never gets there.
To give the MacBook Neo its best fighting chance – and to provide a point of comparison – I put it through my standard “soft” laptop battery benchmark test, looping a 1080p video at maximum brightness and moderate volume until the battery died out.
I was expecting it to fail before 16 hours, because across decades of laptop testing I’ve only hit a small number of laptops that measured up to their manufacturer’s claims.
Indeed, it didn’t run for 16 hours.
It ran for an astonishing 26 hours and 15 minutes.
That’s very impressive, with the obvious caveat in play that it was really only doing one task that entire time.
Push the MacBook Neo harder with more intensive tasks and the battery does drain faster, but still, this absolutely does have the prospect of lasting out a day’s work and then some.
The MacBook Neo ships with a 20W USB-C power adaptor, which, given it’s running on the heart of an iPhone, makes it a very unusual device indeed.
It’s an iPhone (sort of) with a charger in the box AND a headphone jack? Are you sure about this, Apple?
MacBook Neo: Alex’s Verdict
I can’t ignore the fact that I’m reviewing the MacBook Neo very late in its hype life cycle.
With full transparency, I didn’t expect to review it at all; typically with Apple if you can’t get a review product when it’s brand new and the hype cycle is at its most frenzied, you can’t get one at all.
I’m talking here about loan products, not buying them; if you’d like to support Alex Reviews Tech to the level where I can casually buy MacBook Neos for review purposes, feel free to drop me a line.
What this late review period means is that I can’t ignore that I’ve come across more than a few reviews that have declared the MacBook Neo to be an “ideal” student laptop.
For any normal review I’d steer clear of reading anything, because I want my own evaluations to stand alone, but in this case I figured it wasn’t going to happen anyway.
So… back to the point, is it the “ideal” student laptop?
In some ways that’s a very fair assessment. The battery life is the standout factor here, because it does just keep going and going and going and going and… you get the point, right?
However, I do think it depends on what kind of student work you’re talking about, because so many of the comments I’ve seen is that it’s ideal for note taking, simple web research, writing, spreadsheets and so on.
Sure, it can handle those, but the reality in 2026 is that, even with rising component prices, you 100% do not have to spend over $1,000 to get a laptop that can do that.
You can spend a whole lot less to get a simpler system like that, and if you’re on a restricted budget, within that frame in some ways the MacBook Neo is overkill.
Of course, if you want in on the MacOS world, there’s no cheaper way to get on board, and maybe that matters to you. In that case, the lower cost world of Windows and Chromebook notebooks aren’t worth considering, and the context needs to fall to whether the Neo or an Air would be a better buy.
It’s not hard to see where Apple’s “made” the Neo cheaper to build and therefore sell, and that should be part of what you consider when making a purchase decision.
The lowest level MacBook Air will still run rings around the Neo, and depending on your needs, it may be worth paying that extra for the power of a full M5 processor.
If your needs are more basic, or you just need a simpler Mac as a totally portable machine alongside a desktop-power level MacBook Pro, iMac or Mac Mini, it’s not a bad buy.
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Apple MacBook Neo: Pricing and availability
The Apple MacBook Neo retails in Australia from $899 $1049.
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Buy The Apple MacBook Neo! | Buy On Amazon |
If you buy a product using the link above, ART may earn a small commission.
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