MacBook Neo review: Mac enough for most people

The MacBook Neo is a new beginning for the Mac, and therefore a fitting name. Desktop computers and laptops were once the prime focus for Apple, but today they play a smaller part in the operation, overshadowed by the iPhone and the iPad, and increasingly Apple TV.

Millions of iPhone and iPad users still don’t use a Mac, as they are often considered expensive when compared to PC machines. Yes, the best MacBooks are extremely powerful, and for the money, blitz the competition, but if you don’t need to edit huge 4K videos, animations or audio compositions, it can be a little overkill.

Since the 12-inch MacBook was discontinued in 2019, the only option for entry-level users has been an iPad with a keyboard attachment or stump up £1000 for a MacBook Air. Now, with the MacBook Neo, Apple offers a more affordable alternative, and one that stands up against the PC competition.

Not having an M chip may put off existing MacBook users, but the included A18 Pro chip is now so powerful that, unless you are really looking for memory-intensive applications, you really won’t miss it. And if you do, you should probably be looking at the MacBook Air.

The old MacBook was criticised for being underpowered and expensive. The new MacBook Neo is both cheaper and considerably more powerful, making it the perfect option for students and families that just need an everyday laptop. Not only that, it feels premium in a way that a MacBook should.

How much is the MacBook Neo?

First announced on 4 March 2026, the MacBook Neo is available to pre-order now and goes on sale from 11 March. The base model features 256GB storage and is priced at £599 in the UK, $599 in the US, €699 in Europe and A$899 in Australia.

It comes in a choice of four colours, including silver, blush, indigo and citrus. If you want 512GB and Touch ID, it will cost you £699 / $699 / €799 / A$1099. There are no options to upgrade the memory for this model.

Features and design

Despite being a budget device, the Neo features an aluminium chassis. Many laptops attempt to save costs by opting for a plastic shell, however, the use of aluminium here gives it a more premium feel and one that is instantly recognisable as a MacBook. It’s thin and light too, at just 1.27 cm (0.5 inches) thick and weighing 1.23kg (2.7lbs). That’s the same weight as the MacBook Air 13-inch, and while not quite as thin, it does have a smaller footprint, at 29.75cm (11.71 in) x 20.64 cm (8.12 in).

As mentioned previously, it comes in a choice of four colours, with a subtle colour wash on the keyboard and the feet to match. Unfortunately, the supplied USB-C cable provided hasn’t been colour-matched as it was on the blue MacBook Air.

Talking of keyboards, this is a full-sized Magic keyboard, complete with full-height function keys. If you opt for the upgraded Neo model, the top right key includes Touch ID, otherwise, this is just a lock key that brings up your password screen. There’s also a multi-touch trackpad that clicks if you press it – rather than just giving haptic feedback. The one thing missing here for some is any form of backlighting on the keyboard.

While a backlit keyboard is useful when working in darker conditions – particularly with a black keyboard – when working under normal lighting, it’s not a big issue. I was testing the blush finish Neo, and the keyboard is almost white, which made it really easy to see even in low light.

The main body of the Neo has a squared-off edge with curved corners reminiscent of recent iPad and iPhone designs. There’s no MagSafe charging port here, but there are two USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone port. I’m not sure many people still need a 3.5mm port for their headphones, but it is handy for plugging the computer into external speakers.

The USB-C ports don’t support the faster Thunderbolt 4 protocol, and while one port is USB 3 (10Gb/s), the other is a more basic USB 2 port. Either can be used for charging, but the USB 3 port can also be used to connect an external monitor. I tested this by plugging it into the 27-inch Apple Studio monitor, and it works perfectly. However, it defaults to 1920x1080p, which looks a little low-res after the 2k display I’m used to on it.

There are also built-in speakers on the MacBook Neo, with dual side-firing speakers, with the small grills just visible to the front of the sides of the body. These support Spatial audio, and while they are not as extensive as the four-speaker system on the MacBook Air, they are loud enough for general use.

Display

The screen on the Neo is a 13-inch Liquid Retina Display, with 2408x1506 pixels and 500 nits of brightness. This is slightly smaller than the MacBook Air screen and has a standard sRGB colour space rather than the P3 wide colour space, but it offers the same level of brightness.

Compared to the back-lit mini-LED display of the MacBook Pro and the 5K retina Studio Display, the colours from the Neo screen look a little cool, but have great contrast and tone. Viewed in isolation, or compared to lesser machines, the display is really impressive.

I tested a range of photos as well as video on the Neo. The Apple TV show Monarch Legacy of Monsters looks incredible on the 13-inch display, though obviously without the level of detail in the shadows of the MacBook Pro screen.

There’s no notch in the display; instead, the 1080p FaceTime HD camera is built into the top bezel. Newer MacBook models have now been upgraded to a 12MP camera with CenterStage support, which you don’t get here. However, the camera still looks really good on screen and is more than adequate for video calls.

Performance

For the first time in a MacBook, the Neo runs on an A-series chip. The A18 Pro has previously been used in the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. This is a 3-nanometer chip with a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU, plus a 16-core neural engine for AI tasks. And it’s that AI ability that makes this chip really stand out.

Early benchmarks see the Neo’s A18 Pro chip outperforming the MacBook Air with an M1 chip in a multicore CPU test, and nearly matching MacBook Air models with an M4 chip on a single core test. This single-core performance is what will affect standard operation of the machine, and so this strong performance is what makes the Neo seem so snappy.

The advantage of the A18 Pro over something like the older M1 chip is its AI performance. As we saw with the iPhone 16 Pro models, this is designed with AI in mind, so everything from text summaries and queries to generating presentations and images can be performed on-device with ease.

The limitations of the Neo are more likely to come from the memory than the CPU and GPU speeds. With just 8GB of memory, intensive tasks like video editing, gaming or even multitasking can be limited. Most budget PCs now offer a base of 16GB, and the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro now start from 16GB instead of 8GB.

That said, I found that the Neo was more than capable of running multiple applications at once with no problem at all. I installed both Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop on the test device and kept both open alongside Chrome, Apple TV and Apple Music – and still the Neo carried on unhindered.

As a direct test, I batch exported 12 files from Lightroom on the Neo, which took around 4.5 seconds. The same test on the MacBook Pro M5 took just over 2 seconds, so considerably faster, but both are really impressive.

Where I did notice a difference was when restarting the machine. With multiple apps to boot up, the Neo takes much longer before everything is ready to go. This isn’t a problem for most users, though, and the fact that it is still able to run multiple memory-intensive programs is groundbreaking.

Battery

As you might expect, the listed battery life on the Neo isn’t quite up there with the MacBook Pro. However, with 16 hours of video streaming, it’s not that far behind the MacBook Air’s 18 hours. It’s certainly more than you would need for a day’s use without having to plug in.

In practise, the Neo’s battery has held up extremely well. After three days of intermittent use, it still had around 25% left in the tank. With that in mind, I’m confident that all day use is more than achievable. In fact, our sister site, Tom’s Guide measured over 13 hours continuous use, which is seriously impressive.

Should I buy the MacBook Neo?

Most assumed that a MacBook that ran on an iPhone chip would require some serious compromise. However, the MacBook Neo has proved that this is not the case. The A18 Pro chip is not only capable of lightning fast operation for the iPhone 16 Pro / Pro Max, but it handles a full version of Mac OS Tahoe too.

Yes, some compromises have been made to hit this price point and perhaps to differentiate it from the MacBook Air. The lack of backlight on the keyboard, the sRGB screen, the non-thunderbolt ports, and the older style 12MP webcam. However, even with these compromises, the Neo is a great machine to use.

It would have been lovely to have a bit more customisation available, to increase the SSD capacity and maybe add some more memory – though that is potentially limited by the A18 Pro chip. It also seems a little bit tight to only offer the Touch ID with the 512GB capacity model, as it’s a genuinely useful feature and one that can impact security.

Overall though, the MacBook Neo is surprisingly good. I would genuinely recommend this machine to any Apple fans looking for a new laptop. For those creators looking for a workhorse, it doesn’t replace the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, but for everyone else, it’s more than enough to handle all your tasks.

Also consider

For anyone looking for a cheap laptop, there are plenty of options that are cheaper than the Neo in the PC space. Asus Vivobook S14 and Acer’s Aspire Go 15 are certainly two contenders here. However, in the Mac space, options are more limited.

The MacBook Air M5 now starts from £1099 / $1099, which is nearly double that of the Neo – or at least 400 more than the 512GB model. Older Macs can still be found at some online retailers, with some good deals on the MacBook Air M4 available, and even some renewed versions of the MacBook Air M3. However, with some M3 specs you are really not gaining much over the Neo.

For those that want the flexibility of a touchscreen, the iPad Air M4 is the same £599 / $599 price as the MacBook Neo and gives you not just the touchscreen but also a big boost in power. However, this is for the smaller 11-inch model, with the 13-inch adding 200 to the price, while more than 128GB of storage adds to the cost, as does a Magic keyboard – at which point it is more expensive than the MacBook Air.