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Article: Apple MacBook Neo review: a budget-priced game-changer

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4 / 10

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The MacBook Neo is a new, budget-friendly laptop from Apple starting at $599, offering a premium aluminum chassis and a bright display that defy its low price. It represents a significant shift for Apple, providing a high-quality build typically associated with more expensive Macs at a mass-market cost.

Key compromises include a lack of keyboard backlighting and slower USB-C ports that are not clearly labeled by function. Despite these trade-offs, the review concludes it is a surprisingly capable machine that feels solid and premium, not like a cheap, plastic laptop.

The main topics covered are the laptop's affordable price and value proposition, its premium design and build quality, and the specific features and compromises such as the display, keyboard, ports, and overall dimensions.

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https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/macbooks/apple-macbook-neo-a18-pro-review

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Latest from Tom's Hardware

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2026-03-10 13:00

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2026-03-10 10:31

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Tom's Hardware Verdict
The MacBook Neo is a spectacular budget laptop that should shock the PC industry. It never makes you feel like you're getting a lesser machine in exchange for affordability, but it would be nice if Apple could backlight the keyboard and make the ports work in a more seamless fashion.
Pros
- +
Premium chassis
- +
Bright, vivid display
- +
Touchpad is clickable anywhere
- +
Most affordable MacBook ever
Cons
- -
Keyboard isn't backlit
- -
Ports are not labeled based on fuctionality
Why you can trust Tom's Hardware
Apple's Macs have typically been viewed as pricey, premium devices. While Apple clearly can't ditch its penchant for a high-quality machine, it can make them relatively affordable. With the introduction of the MacBook Neo, starting (and tested) at $599, Apple has made a laptop for most people at a price that is shockingly affordable for the platform. And considering the cost of competing PCs are, in many cases, going up thanks to RAM and storage demands from AI hyperscalers, it’s refreshing to see a major company launch a product at a new low price.
And affordable doesn't mean cheap. The MacBook Neo has the quality aluminum chassis you would expect from any other Mac, along with a bright, clear display. It certainly doesn't feel like it's a bargain bin system.
Apple has made some compromises, though. The two USB-C ports are slower than what many others offer these days, and the keyboard isn't backlit. But if you can live with those cuts, Apple has delivered a surprisingly capable machine that could be one of the best ultrabooks at this mass-market price.
Design of the MacBook Neo
The MacBook Neo sure doesn't look or feel like a budget laptop; it's like a magic trick.
The aluminum body does a lot of the lifting here. As soon as you touch a Neo and lift the lid up with one finger, it feels like a premium machine. This doesn't feel less than — it's the real deal. The four colors are fun (I'm fond of the indigo, myself), but I’d still like to see Apple bring colors like they did to the iMac to the Neo; I appreciate that Apple went bold with the yellow-green citrus on our review unit, but I would have preferred a more pure yellow or green. This shade is lost somewhere between a tennis ball and a highlighter. Apple color-matches accents and folders in macOS, so the folders were a light green, too. It's a nice touch if you do like the color you got.
You still get rounded edges and flat sides like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The Apple logo is embossed onto the lid in a tone-on-tone style, rather than reflective like on the more expensive laptops.
The premium feel matters a lot. When I step into a retail store, I'm used to seeing cheap laptops that are made of plastic. The ones that do use metal are often covered in stickers, and often use generations-old components. Apple making the Neo feel like the rest of its lineup in that one respect makes you feel like you aren't cheaping out. Instead, you're getting something built solid that happens to be relatively affordable.
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With the lid open, you start to notice some of the bigger differences. The bezel around the 13-inch display is thicker than on the Air or Pro, but acceptable for a device of this price in the market today. In fact, there's one gift in the bezel: Apple can fit the webcam in it without a notch.
The keyboard has a hue to it, too, with color-matched keys, though they're a bit more subtle than the rest of the notebook. The touchpad isn't as sweepingly large, but this system also has a smaller footprint in some respects.
The MacBook Neo measures 11.71 x 8.12 x 0.5 inches and weighs 2.7 pounds. It has a smaller footprint than the 13-inch MacBook Air, but is 0.6 mm taller. They weigh the same amount. I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference between the two in a backpack.
All of the ports are on the left side of the Neo. That includes the 3.5 mm headphone jack and two USB-C ports: one USB 3 (10Gb/s, support for DisplayPort) and one USB 2 port. Neither port is labeled, which I think is a mistake. Even putting a little monitor icon for DisplayPort would be a functional enhancement, if not an aesthetic one.
While most people buying a $599 laptop will probably never plug into a monitor (and perhaps just make backups once in a while with Time Machine), you shouldn't have to guess.
Instead, Apple has put notifications into macOS. If you plug a monitor or a high-speed drive into the USB-C 2 port, the system will ask you to move it. It's clunky, and the fact that the ports don't "just work" is the least Apple thing about this entire laptop. (If you have a Thunderbolt accessory, you'll get a different notification, as the Neo doesn't support Thunderbolt like the Air and the Pro).
I get that this is the first computer with an A-series chip to feature two USB ports, and this likely required significant engineering work to get another USB port at all. But if you're not going to label your ports, they need to just work.
In general, a MacBook Neo owner will always be able to use one major accessory and charge the laptop, which will be enough for most people. I just think it could have been done more neatly.
MacBook Neo Specifications
Apple A18 Pro and 8GB of RAM
Apple is powering the MacBook Neo with its A18 Pro. This chip was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro. Reviewers have been saying for years that smartphone chips were overpowered — the A18 Pro, in a sense, proves them right.
The A18 Pro that Apple is using with the MacBook Neo features six CPU cores: two performance cores and four efficiency cores. There's a five-core GPU, which is down one core from the version of this chip used in 2024's flagship iPhone.
The system-on-a-chip also comes with 8GB of RAM. When Apple announced that, some hardware enthusiasts suggested that it wasn't enough. To them, I say this: the MacBook Neo isn't for you.
Would I like more RAM? Sure. But I know what RAM is. Most people use their laptops primarily to send emails, watch videos, do homework, write documents, create spreadsheets, or make purchases that feel too important to make on a phone. In my testing, the MacBook Neo lets you do all of that. It can be slightly slower booting up, downloading large files, or switching between tabs in heavy use, but you'd really only know if you compared it directly to Apple's M-series chips.
At $599, you won't find too many laptops with 16GB of RAM. Many that do will have other compromises. For the people in my life who would buy this kind of laptop, they'll get by for at least a few years with 8GB of RAM, assuming local AI doesn't become some sort of mainstream hobby. If you know you need the RAM, you know to shop elsewhere.
Is more RAM better? Sure. But most people don't know what RAM is, and those who care are willing to spend more money on a more powerful device. The vast majority of the market for a $599 laptop will browse 14 Safari tabs, shop on Amazon, iMessage their friends, write their English paper, and binge-watch The Pitt in peace. If you're looking for more RAM and don't want Apple's latest M-series processor, you can still go look for deals on old stock on M2 and M3 MacBook Airs. Good luck finding one new at this price, and if it's used, you won't have your warranty or as many years of support.
Time will tell how many macOS updates this laptop gets, though Apple has a pretty good track record there. But in the immediate sense, this feels like a totally usable Mac, and frankly, one that I could get by with more often than I care to admit as an enthusiast.
Productivity Performance on the MacBook Neo
OK, you just read all that and you're still here. That means you want to see numbers. Time for some benchmarks. Here, we're comparing the Neo to an M3 MacBook Air — an older one some customers may be considering to try to get a discount right now — as well as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13, an $899 laptop using the mid-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 chip with 8 CPU cores.
On Geekbench 6, the Neo notched a single-core score of 3,535, with the A18 Pro surpassing both the M3 (3,082) and the Snapdragon X Plus (2,486). Single-core is where I expect most Neo users will spend most of their time, doing simple tasks like browsing the web and writing up documents.
On the multi-core test, the Neo and the A18 Pro's six CPU cores came in last place with a score of 8,920. The Surface Laptop 13 hit 11,321 (with an 8-core chip) while the M3 MacBook Air won at 12,087 (the M3 was also an 8-core chip). At least part of why those chips won is because they have more cores in general, and the M3 in particular had more performance cores. Still, it also suggests those are better systems for slightly heavier lifting.
For example, on Handbrake, in which we have laptops transcode a 4K video to 1080p, the Neo faltered, taking 9 minutes and 57 seconds to complete the task. The more expensive Surface Laptop 13 completed the task in under 5 minutes.
The Neo did about as expected for a budget laptop on our 25GB file transfer test, achieving a rate of 654.82 MBps. That's only slightly slower than the Surface, but the MacBook Air was far much faster at 1,167.29 MBps.
I also ran the Xcode benchmark, which simulates compiling a large codebase using the suite of Apple developer tools. It took 6 minutes and 47 seconds on the MacBook Neo, far more than other Macs. That being said, you could do this work, at least if you're extremely patient.
On more premium laptops, we often run a Cinebench 2026 stress test. That's a difficult rendering benchmark. In this case, I ran just one run, with a score of 1,439. More telling was that the run took 14 minutes and 2 seconds. Case in point, this system just isn't designed for that kind of workload. (And like in most other systems, scores would likely drop from there,)
While Apple doesn't allow access to its chips' clock speeds, Cinebench estimates that the A18 Pro has a single-core clock speed of up to 4.0 GHz on single-core tasks and 2.4 GHz for multi-core.
Gaming and Graphics on the MacBook Neo
It would be far-fetched to call the MacBook Neo a gaming laptop in a traditional sense. While Apple has had a few major releases on iPhone, the A18 Pro isn't designed for high-end Mac gaming like its M-series. There's a reason the one game shown on the Neo page on Apple's website is Oceanhorn 3, an Apple Arcade game that can also be played on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV.
That being said, light gaming is possible.
And the Neo beat the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8-core) in the Surface Laptop 13 in benchmarks. On 3DMark Steel Nomad, the Neo earned a score of 369, beating the Surface's 229 points.
On the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, using the "For this Mac" settings, we saw the Neo play at 32.59 frames per second at a resolution of 1,637 x 1,024, which it defaulted to. That preset, a mix of low and medium settings, also included MetalFX dynamic resolution scaling. There are settings that can play games, though playing below 1080p isn't ideal. And this also suggests that there were a number of frames below 30 FPS.
I also played a bit of Stray, a lovely, Mac-native game. But even that much lighter game needed to be turned down to its lowest settings at the low resolution of 1,637 x 1,024 with the game's built-in upscaling to get between 30 and 40 FPS at the game's opening sequence, but it was as low as 20 FPS in other scenes.
Can you game on this system? Yes. Should you probably stick to Apple Arcade games that also work on iPhones? Also yes. Apple isn't selling this as a gaming system. It isn't one. It has fewer graphics cores than the iPhone that originally housed this chip. At this price, that's fine.
Display on the MacBook Neo
The MacBook Neo's 13-inch screen, at 2,408 x 1,506, is surprisingly high-resolution for this price point. You'd usually find a 1080p or 1280p screen, depending on aspect ratio, but here you get something a bit closer to 1440p (give or take some pixels on either end). The display has a 60 Hz refresh rate, which makes sense at this price.
The LED, IPS screen is the same type of panel used on the MacBook Air, and I think it was a good investment to spend money on the screen. It is, however, missing True Tone, the feature that uses an ambient light sensor (which this laptop lacks) to adjust the screen's color temperature to your environment.
I was impressed while watching a trailer for The Odyssey using the MacBook Neo. The subtleties of an orange glow on Matt Damon's face from a light on his boat in an otherwise deep blue sea aren't as striking on even basic 1080p screens that come with more expensive notebooks. Viewing angles might be a little dimmer than on some MacBook Airs I used, but if you're looking head on, you're great.
On our colorimeter, the Neo's screen covered 110.9% of the sRGB color volume space and 78.8% of DCI-P3 (though the system itself doesn't support the DCI-P3 color space).
Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Neo
Apple's keyboard on the MacBook Neo is comfortable. It is not, however, backlit. The keys on my Citrus unit are ever so slightly yellowed to create some contrast, though I wouldn't mind darker legends.
For touch typists like me, backlighting isn't really a problem. I know where keys are, I know them by feel, I don't have to look (though I will admit to occasionally getting mixed up on the function row). But lots of people look at keys, and those people do sometimes use computers in the dark. I definitely did as a student while my roommate tried to get some shuteye. My mother likes to have backlit keys at night because she just can't see them otherwise. Point being, people in all of the key demographics could benefit here.
The keyboard itself is good. The 1 millimeter of travel is similar to the keyboard on the MacBook Air. I found that it feels slightly stiffer than Apple's other laptops, though not in a way that tired me. (My guess here is that the Neo's keycaps are using a different kind of plastic for the keycaps). I was still able to speed along and hit 116 words per minute and 98% accuracy on the monkeytype typing test, which is close to my best.
If you get the base model Neo, the top right key is a lock button. On the 512GB version, you get Touch ID, which I think is worth spending the extra $100 just for logging in and paying for things quickly and more easily over the lifetime of a device. Schools using cloud services may decide TouchID isn't worth that bump.
The touchpad on the MacBook Neo is mechanical, rather than the luxurious "Force Touch" haptic touchpads on the MacBook Air and Pro. But Apple's touchpad, unlike many budget machines, lets you click anywhere on the touchpad. All macOS Tahoe's gestures worked flawlessly for me, and the click is comfortable. The ability to click at the top of the touchpad and not be halted by hinge placement really makes this touchpad easy to use.
Audio on the MacBook Neo
Apple has dual speakers on the MacBook Neo, with one on each side of the laptop.
On the one hand, these sound better than the speakers on most budget Windows laptops, and even on some high-end ones. On the other, they're still largely just fine.
Brandi Carlile's "Church & State" delivered clear vocals and guitars, but the song's bass riff (which really stands out among Carlile's music), sounded flat. The speakers could fill the room at max volume, but quieter listening may be a more personal experience.
I felt the speakers, which are located just under the keyboard deck, vibrating with my hands on the wrist rest, particularly at the highest volumes. It happened across all sorts of music, from alt rock (Cannons' "Starlight") to Americana (Noah Kahan's "The Great Divide"), so I can't blame Carlile's bass line. It happens on a lot of competing laptops — even some premium Windows notebooks, but it's still an engineering challenge I would like to see Apple tackle in future revisions of the notebook.
The 3.5 mm headphone jack doesn't have support for high-impedance headphones like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, but I'm not sure someone using a $599 laptop is also jumping to use studio-grade headphones.
Upgradeability on the MacBook Neo
There's one big choice when it comes to configuring the MacBook Neo: 256GB or 512GB of storage. Think carefully, because you can't change it later.
Sure, you can take the bottom of the laptop off by removing the eight pentalobe screws. And while Apple has added more screws to components like the battery for schools to service, you can't upgrade the SSD, which is soldered to the board. (The 8GB of RAM is packaged with the processor.)
But if you need a repair, chances are you'll be heading to the local Apple Store.
Battery Life on the MacBook Neo
The MacBook's battery life will last quite awhile until you need to charge it, but I wouldn't quite call it all-day battery life. It's good for the price, but the 36.5 WHr battery can only do so much.
On our battery test, which involves streaming video, browsing the web, and running light OpenGL graphics test with the screen at 150 nits, the MacBook Neo ran for 13 hours and 28 minutes.
That's great for $599. The Surface Laptop ran for an impressive 17:14, though that has the advantage of a lower-resolution, 1080p display. Microsoft also uses a larger, 50 WHr battery, though that system starts at $899.
The 13-inch M3-based MacBook Air from 2024 ran for 15 hours and 13 minutes when we tested it.
Apple didn't include fast-charging technology in the MacBook Neo. After fully discharging the laptop, it charged to 22% after half an hour with the included 20-watt charger. Following another 30 minutes, the charge doubled exactly, to 44%.
Heat on the MacBook Neo
The MacBook Neo stays remarkably cool. Even under a stressful test that most Neo users won't even consider — running Cinebench, a rendering test — the fanless system stayed comfortable to the touch.
The keyboard measured in at 93 degrees Fahrenheit, while the touchpad was a cooler 82 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the laptop measured 96 F.
Tunabelly Software's TG Pro, which measures Mac temperatures, couldn't detect the A18 Pro during our testing. But the system average across other internal sensors measured 58.58 degrees Celsius inside the system.
Webcam on the MacBook Neo
The MacBook Neo hails the return of the 1080p camera, bringing back the "FaceTime HD" brand from the M1 era.
Given that 1080p webcams are a bit of a standard even among some high-end Windows PCs, it's hard to ding Apple for the choice here. Apple did ditch some other camera-focused features, like Desk View and Center Stage (the latter which some video chatting apps may offer in software).
And it's a good camera! Frankly, I'm not sure I've seen a webcam on a laptop under $1,000 that looks this good before. It's color accurate, and in video calls you could make out details like individual hairs on my head and the speckled paint on our industrial-looking office ceiling.
Apple has also gotten rid of the green LED next to the camera to let you know that it's on. It was disconcerting at first, but macOS does have both camera and microphone indicators in the menu bar. But in full screen applications, the menu bar goes away, instead leaving a small green dot in the corner of the screen. I'd prefer to have the physical indicator, especially for younger kids getting their first laptops. But if I've gotten used to these status notifications being in software on my iPhone, perhaps I can get used to it here.
Software on the MacBook Neo
The MacBook Neo comes with the latest version of macOS, Tahoe 26.3.1. It brings the "Liquid Glass" design language that iPhone or iPad users new to the Mac may already be used to. The use of translucent effects and a lot of icons in menus have been divisive among Mac diehards, though I suspect that it won't be as controversial among those coming from Windows, ChromeOS, or just having a phone.
The MacBook Neo has a bunch of pre-installed apps in the box, just like its more expensive siblings. These include the Safari web browser, Messages for texting and iMessage, FaceTime, a new Phone app, Notes, Reminders, Photos, Mail, Calendar, and service-based apps like Music, Apple TV, and News.
Most of this syncs with an iPhone, which will be great for first-time users. If you have an iPhone and a Neo, you can use iPhone Mirroring, one of my favorite features from the last few years, to use your phone from the computer.
There are some free workflow apps built into macOS, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Many of the most common apps you may want, like Microsoft Office, are available in the App Store as native apps for Apple Silicon, though they're not included.
While macOS has a lot in the box, it doesn't feel bloated. I've used a lot of cheap Windows laptops, and the companies that make them often fill them with trialware to help make more money off of them. It's great to turn on an affordable system without needing to uninstall a whole bunch of junk I don't want.
MacBook Neo Configurations
Apple has kept the Neo's configuration options super simple.
For $599, you get the A18 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. For $699, you get the exact same computer, except the storage jumps up to 512GB and you get Touch ID. The only other choice you have to make is color.
For individuals, I think spending the extra $100 is money well spent. The extra storage is great for photos, music, and documents, while Touch ID is so much faster than typing in a password.
But if you're a school buying these in bulk for classrooms and have students store assignments in cloud services, you don't need Touch ID. Considering you can save $100 with an educational discount, the $499 for schools or students looks pretty good.
The MacBook Neo comes with a 1-year warranty. For those who want to go the AppleCare+ route for extended protection, it's $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year (or you can add it to an Apple Care One plan for $19.99 per month for three devices).
Bottom Line
Yes, the MacBook Neo is $599. But it rarely feels like it. Apple invested in a premium aluminium chassis, a bright, good-quality screen, and a decent keyboard and mouse. Putting performance aside, those are the parts of a computer that most people care the most about. Add in about 13 hours of battery life, and you get a machine for most people doing the most common tasks, but in a package that feels like it's something special.
The colors, while nice, could be more vivid. My real issue with the laptop is that the ports aren't labeled, and that the hardware relies on macOS as a crutch to correct users. While I'm sure the lack of keyboard backlighting helped bring the cost down, it's the number one usability feature I would bring back to make the laptop more accessible in more situations.
For most people doing most things — web browsing, sending emails, writing papers, shopping, even light photo editing — the MacBook Neo will do just fine. I'm an enthusiast; I'd love to see more RAM. But plenty of people's simple needs will be met by the A18 Pro and its strong single-core performance.
And for those people, the Neo will look very attractive next to the many plastic machines with poor screens you get when you walk into a big-box store. Every other PC company making notebooks under $700 is officially on notice.
Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01