MacBook Neo: The Chromebook Killer

When Apple announced the MacBook Neo, the headline was simple. A brand new MacBook for £599.

That immediately made it the cheapest MacBook Apple has launched in years, and it clearly targets the same audience Apple quietly served for a long time with the M1 MacBook Air, which continued to sell through education and selected resellers until very recently.

Now that people have started using the Neo in the real world, the picture is becoming clearer. For many people, it’s exactly what they hoped for. For others, it highlights where Apple has drawn the line between budget and performance.

Performance in the Real World

The MacBook Neo is designed for everyday computing, and in those tasks, it performs very well.

Things like web browsing, Office or Google Docs, email, messaging, video streaming and general student workloads all run smoothly. For many people, this will feel like a very capable everyday machine, and in lighter tasks, it’s actually around 7% faster than the MacBook Air it effectively replaces.

That’s why this device could be a game-changer for education. A £599 (£499 with educational discount) MacBook running full macOS is suddenly a realistic alternative to Chromebooks and lower-cost Windows laptops in schools and universities.

However, Apple has clearly positioned the Neo as a general-purpose machine rather than a professional one.

When you move into heavier workloads such as video editing, development tools, or sustained creative applications, older Apple Silicon machines like the M1 MacBook Air can still perform better in some pro apps. That doesn’t mean the Neo is slow, but it does show that Apple has tuned it for everyday tasks rather than long, demanding workloads.

Memory is another area people have discussed. The Neo comes with 8GB of RAM, and realistically, that is still just about enough for most people. macOS manages memory well, so browsing, documents, media and normal productivity tasks run comfortably. Where 8GB begins to show its limits is with heavy multitasking; you might be forced to close some of those tabs you love to leave open.

Storage performance has also been noted as slower than that of other Apple Silicon Macs. In practice, though, most users won’t notice this. Unless you are constantly moving large files or running disk-heavy workloads, everyday usage feels perfectly normal.

Overall, the Neo performs exactly how it was designed to: fast and responsive for everyday computing, but not intended to replace a MacBook Pro.

What Apple Changed to Hit the Price

Where the Neo becomes more interesting is how Apple balanced features to reach that £599 price.

Battery life is slightly shorter, but the upside is convenience. The Neo only requires a 20W charger, so you can charge it with the same adapter you already use for your iPhone. It also works easily with portable battery packs, which makes travel charging very simple.

The display is another area where Apple has clearly drawn a line between the Neo and its higher-end machines. On its own, the screen looks perfectly good, but when placed next to a MacBook Pro with its mini-LED display, the difference is noticeable. The Pro models have brighter highlights, deeper contrast and more vibrant colours. For everyday use, the Neo is still perfectly usable, but it isn’t competing with Apple’s premium displays.

Image: https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/s/8Tk9D957dQ 

There are also a few missing features people have pointed out. For example, the keyboard lacks backlighting. While this stands out on a Mac because Apple usually includes it, it’s worth remembering that most laptops in this price range don’t include a backlit keyboard either, so it’s fairly typical in the wider market.

Taken together, the Neo feels like Apple has stripped the machine back to what most people actually need while keeping the build quality and experience recognisably “Mac”. And in many ways it works. The MacBook Neo might be the best entry-level Mac Apple has ever made.

For most people, it will do everything they need. A refurbished M1 MacBook Air can still be a slight improvement for some heavier applications, and in our opinion, if you’re spending roughly the same money, an M2 MacBook Air 13-inch with 16GB RAM is often the better choice overall unless having a brand-new machine is important to you.

But for a brand new MacBook at £599, the Neo is going to open the door to a lot of people who simply couldn’t justify a Mac before.

And if you do buy one and later decide it isn’t the right machine for you, we’ll happily buy your MacBook Neo from you. Head over to Sell My Mac and get a free valuation!

Buyer’s remorse doesn’t have to be permanent.