Apple MacBook Neo Review

I’ve been pining for an Apple instrumentality to the bold laptop colors of its aged iBook G3s for years. The caller MacBook Neo, which comes successful 4 colors that aren’t conscionable achromatic oregon silver, gets adjacent to that, and does thing other I’m not definite I expected. With the Neo, Apple made a $599 laptop that feels similar it should outgo hundreds of dollars more. And did it using, of each things, an iPhone processor.

For years, Windows laptops and Chromebooks person acceptable an anticipation that a fund laptop tin beryllium bully capable to surf the web, but that if you privation to bash overmuch else, well, it sucks to beryllium you. Their compromises are instantly obvious; things similar dim displays that are hard to spot from immoderate space different than straight successful beforehand of them, oregon cheap-feeling integrative bodies that creak and crook nether the slightest pressure. They’re underpowered and won’t past much than a fewer hours connected a afloat charge. The Neo has nary of these compromises; instead, it is simply a full-fledged, genuinely bully computer, capable to grip everything from casual usage to immoderate existent workloads without complaint, for hours and hours.

Design

The colors are the big, evident quality betwixt the Neo and immoderate different Mac laptop. I reviewed the Blush model, which is simply a pinkish laptop that verges connected lavender successful immoderate airy and metallic successful others. It besides ships successful Citrus, a yellow-green exemplary that tin besides look metallic successful immoderate light, Indigo, a acheronian blue, and Silver. I privation Apple had gone harder with the lighter shades; I emotion the saturated colors of caller iMacs, and had hoped that with the Neo, the institution would propulsion the aforesaid magnitude of caution to the wind. But hey, it’s a start, and they bash look large erstwhile the airy hits them conscionable right.

Color attraction aside, the Neo is truthful typically Apple that it’s astir hard to judge its $599 starting terms tag. It’s housed successful a sturdy aluminum ammunition that’s fractional an inch thick, each closed up. The laptop opens easy if you drawback 1 digit nether the lid and lift, and erstwhile it closes, it makes a brushed yet satisfying thump arsenic the outer rubber taps the bottommost case. The show hardly moves erstwhile you’re typing, and neither does the assemblage flex and bounce the mode it would connected a likewise inexpensive Windows laptop oregon Chromebook.

The keyboard feels great, too. The keys themselves are ever-so-slightly mushier than connected my M2 MacBook Air, but this is different the aforesaid keyboard, down to the Touch ID sensor successful the precocious close country – astatine least, connected the 512GB mentation of the Neo, which costs $100 more. (It’s conscionable a powerfulness fastener connected the basal $599 model.) Apple gave the keys a creamy tint that, connected the Blush model, shifts betwixt airy pinkish and off-white, depending connected lighting.

The trackpad looks conscionable similar it does connected different Apple laptops successful caller years, but underneath, it’s fundamentally changed. It has the aforesaid multitouch gestures – a four-finger swipe cycles betwixt desktop spaces, and swiping up with 3 fingers inactive zooms retired to amusement you each the unfastened windows connected the existent abstraction – but it’s present mechanical, and its click has a batch much question and thunk. Although it’s apt a cost-saving measure, Apple made definite you tin inactive click anyplace you want, alternatively than lone the bottommost three-fourths oregon truthful similar galore Chromebooks and Windows laptops.

There are a fig of different signs that the Neo is simply a fund laptop. Its show is 13 inches, versus 13.6 inches connected the M2 Air, and it’s got a thicker bezel, capable truthful to accommodate its 1080p webcam. (A bummer? Perhaps not. Depends connected however you consciousness astir different MacBooks’ notch.) The webcam is bully capable for meetings but don’t expect the realistic, saturated colors and crisp edges that iPhone selfie cameras person produced for years.

The Neo’s speakers are side-firing alternatively of tucked into the hinge arsenic connected the Air. They inactive dependable remarkably bully by examination to different inexpensive and adjacent midrange laptop speakers, though, with balanced dependable that adjacent has a small bass and ne'er comes crossed arsenic tinny oregon unreasonably neglectful of immoderate portion of the audio spectrum. They seemingly enactment Dolby Atmos, but they nutrient a beauteous constrictive soundstage – a hoity-toity word for however spread-out the dependable seems – compared to my M2 Air, and adjacent narrower compared to the M1 Air that had speakers firing close up astatine you from either broadside of the keyboard. But whatever. This is simply a fund laptop; speakers usually consciousness similar an implicit afterthought.

Being a fund laptop makes the information that the Air lone has 2 USB-C ports and a headphone jack (now adjacent the beforehand of the case’s broadside edge, not the backmost right), with nary SD paper slots oregon HDMI outputs to talk of, a batch much tolerable. While I deliberation the Neo is rather a susceptible machine, folks who bargain it won’t miss those things. Most won’t miss the Thunderbolt throughput that the USB-C ports connected the Air are susceptible of either, but if they do, astatine slightest the rear-most larboard uses USB 3.0 and is inactive susceptible of 10Gbps throughput that tin enactment a 4K show astatine 60Hz. The different is USB 2.0, truthful it’s slower astatine 480Mbps, but either larboard volition complaint astatine afloat power. Apple provides a 20W charger successful the box, but the Neo volition complaint astatine up to 30W if you person a powerfulness ceramic that tin negociate it.

Display

The MacBook Neo has a large display. It’s bright, astatine 500 nits, and it features a 2408 x 1506 autochthonal solution that, astatine 219 pixels-per-inch, is arsenic crisp arsenic immoderate different Apple laptop erstwhile viewed astatine its highest resolution.

Color-wise, it’s precise adjacent to arsenic vibrant arsenic my MacBook Air’s screen, but for 1 difference. Apple advertises that the Neo covers the sRGB colour space, not the wider P3 of the Air. However, it inactive pushes 1 cardinal colors similar a P3-covering show would, and erstwhile I picked “Display P3” successful the Color Profile conception nether Settings, I got lone precise somewhat duller results compared to my M2 MacBook Air utilizing a Wide Gamut trial leafage online with each.

To beryllium clear, I’m telling you each of this much arsenic trivia than thing else. See, unless you attraction profoundly astir this circumstantial taxable and person large eyes, oregon you enactment successful a assemblage that depends connected being capable to spot extraordinarily insignificant colour differences, you’d ne'er announcement a quality betwixt the default colour illustration of the Neo and different modular backlit MacBook Air LCD display.

That said, you won’t find OLED-level opposition and the Neo has a 60Hz display, but the aforesaid goes for the Air’s show and adjacent the company’s $1,599 Studio Display. It adjacent supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG video. It’s got large opposition for an LCD panel, and its question is bully and smooth, adjacent if it doesn’t ascent to 120Hz.

General Performance

The MacBook Neo’s show communicative shows conscionable however absurdly bully Apple’s smartphone chips person become. That’s particularly existent erstwhile considering that these are binned versions of the A18 Pro SoCs, which Apple primitively enactment wrong the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. That is to say, they diagnostic a 6-core CPU similar the 16 Pros, but a 5-core GPU – 1 less than the chips’ archetypal 6-core GPUs.

Despite that, the MacBook Neo performs amended connected Geekbench 6 benchmarks than the 2019 Mac Pro, a machine that started astatine astir $6,000. It’s silly, but it’s true, astatine slightest erstwhile comparing to the Mac Pro’s basal specs. It’s astir on-par with the archetypal M1 MacBook Air, which I benchmarked for comparison. The Neo’s single-core show outdid the M1 Air by 1,000 points successful my Geekbench investigating for astir a 41% improvement, but the M1 Air inactive edged retired the Neo by a fewer 100 points, oregon astir 4%, successful multicore performance. Meanwhile, the M2 Air scored 2655 (27.31% lower) and 10157 (25% higher) successful the aforesaid azygous and multi-core show tests.

In existent use, the Neo doesn’t conscionable hum along; it’s snappy, adjacent successful the look of my day-to-day workload that usually involves dozens of tabs dispersed crossed Arc, Safari, and, sometimes, Chrome. I don’t bash dense enactment successful Photoshop and Pixelmator – mostly conscionable cropping, insignificant colour editing, and layering – but the Neo handles that enactment conscionable fine. I recovered its limits easy erstwhile editing 4K video; layering 4 clips with assorted transparency effects and cropping made playback successful the exertion choppy. But it’s doubtful that it had thing to bash with compute limits, and everything to bash with its constricted memory.

In fact, RAM and retention velocity are this laptop’s main choke points. Apple doesn’t connection the Neo with much than 8GB of RAM. That’s inactive capable for astir radical to bash airy and adjacent medium-duty enactment without noticing immoderate slowdown, but if you propulsion it hard capable with memory-intensive tasks, the Neo volition get from its interior SSD to marque up the difference, a process called representation swap (or conscionable “swap”).

AmorphousDiskMark scores for the MacBook Neo (left) and the M2 MacBook Air (right)

On my M2 MacBook Air, that’s not a immense woody and I don’t ever announcement it. But I bash connected the Neo, due to the fact that its SSD retention is markedly slower. Using AmorphousDiskMark, sequential reads topped retired astatine 1714.88 MB/s, and writes astatine 1720.69 MB/s. That’s rather a spot much sluggish than the 2,984.08 MB/s and 3,248.16 MB/s respective highs of my M2 Air. Meanwhile, random reads peaked astatine 582.60 MB/s connected the Neo, and 973.60 connected the M2 Air. What each of that means is that the Neo volition beryllium choppier erstwhile it comes to calling things stored successful swap, and noticeably slower to transportation files.

And yet, I didn’t consciousness similar my acquisition utilizing the Neo was degraded. I mightiness person noticed erstwhile I was successful swap, but it ne'er really slowed my enactment down. It ne'er made maine beryllium and hold for thing longer than it took for maine to timepiece that the laptop was nary longer powering done astatine afloat steam. To truly bog the Neo down would instrumentality pushing it past immoderate precise tenable limits, and astatine that point, you’re moving up into the $1,099-plus territory of the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Neo’s Got Game

The Neo runs games acold amended than it has immoderate close to. There aren’t a ton of MacOS-compatible AAA games to propulsion astatine it, but determination are some, including Death Stranding and Resident Evil Village, some of which I tried out.

Death Stranding played the best. In the mountainous opening country of the game, I could number connected a framerate betwixt 30 fps and the mid-40s erstwhile I utilized Apple’s Metal upscaling, from 1440 x 810 to 1080p, with each graphics settings acceptable arsenic precocious arsenic the crippled would fto me. If I turned disconnected upscaling but near different settings the same, it was inactive precise playable, hanging astir successful the mid-20s. I’d expect things to get hairy successful action-packed sequences, but it’s evident that you could play the crippled with reasonably precocious graphics settings from opening to extremity with astir nary issues.

RE Village is simply a batch harder connected the Neo. At 1080p, sans upscaling, and with each settings astatine max, video lagged way, mode down the audio during in-game cutscenes arsenic the Neo struggled to render each framework astatine conscionable a fewer per second. With upscaling connected and the close premix of settings – I turned things similar Mesh and Ambient Occlusion to the max, shadiness prime to mid, and kept each of the post-processing features similar bloom lighting and lens flare connected – framerate ranged betwixt the debased 30s and occasionally reached up to 50fps.

Throughout each of this gaming and everything other I enactment it done earlier that, the Neo lone ever got a small spot warm. That’s peculiarly awesome erstwhile you see that it’s a wholly fanless laptop.

On its face, buying the Neo for gaming seems silly. Sure, you tin play a batch of indie games and it works with tons of iPad and iPhone games. But large crippled studios inactive aren’t giving MacOS overmuch love, contempt Apple’s galore overtures to them – successful the signifier of gaming overlays, a Game Mode that prioritizes graphics show erstwhile a crippled is on, and better-than-nothing controller enactment that lets you remap buttons, arsenic agelong arsenic your controller is reasonably standard.

Still, it’s bully to cognize that if you bash bargain one, determination are a fewer bully games that’ll tally connected it, and tally amended than you’d expect – surely amended than a comparably-priced Windows laptop oregon adjacent 1 that costs more. Heck, my (admittedly four-year-old) Samsung Galaxy Book 2 360, which was a $900 laptop erstwhile it was new, can’t grip Rez Infinite, the somewhat graphically-overhauled mentation of the music-based, on-rails shooter that primitively debuted connected the Dreamcast.

Battery

According to Apple, the MacBook Neo is bully for 16 hours of video streaming and arsenic overmuch arsenic 11 hours of wireless web use. When utilized arsenic my superior enactment laptop – meaning dozens of tabs astatine each times, 2 browsers, chat apps similar Slack, immoderate airy Photoshop oregon Pixelmator, and much – I got astir precisely that. I started astatine astir 8AM and yet plugged it successful astir 6:45PM arsenic it deed 2%. That was with the show astatine astir 75% brightness, truthful I’d ideate you could eke retired much clip if you went lower.

Even connected the time I tested its gaming chops, I started with astir 90% complaint and got astir six hours with the show astatine afloat brightness. That was an hr of regular use, an hr of gaming that chewed done astir 50% of its artillery beingness (from astir 75% to astir 25%), past different 4 hours earlier I had to plug it in. That makes consciousness – the much you enactment your laptop through, the little clip you’ll get retired of its battery. As I’m penning this connected my past time of testing, it’s sitting astatine 27% artillery aft astir 5 hours of moving successful which I pushed its limits with video editing, reckless browser tab usage, and dense downloads.

The Neo is not rather the artillery powerhouse of the MacBook Air, the existent mentation of which Apple says volition spell for up to 15 hours, but it’s plentifulness for a afloat workday. Perhaps more, if you tally astatine a little brightness and you’re not hammering the artillery the mode my irresponsible tab usage does.