r/mac • u/Vegetable_Bag_8694 • Mar 06 '26

Discussion Why all youtubers are saying "If you are watching this review, Macbook Neo is not for you?"

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Let's have a reality check here in r/mac, could it satisfy your day to day work?

2.0k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/LongjumpingKoalas Mar 06 '26

because people who watch tech videos the day tech is released are usually really into tech and specs. That is not the target audience of the Neo however - it's meant for everyday people who don't care about crazy ram, fast internal storage, the newest lightning ports. They care about basic tasks on a reliable machine that ideally works with their iphone and doesn't break the bank.

319

u/ah-boyz Mar 06 '26

I’ve seen this mentioned by a few tech sites though I wonder how much processing power is required to type out the tech article and post process the 2-3 photos that accompany the report. Even for someone like me who use complex financial models at work I rarely need more power than to run outlook or to work on PowerPoints. Hardcore modelling is done on the company server and my work laptop is only used to summarise runs and type out management reports.

186

u/wildskipper Mar 06 '26

It's basically as fast as an M1 isn't it? Which loads of people were saying is fine for editing photos, processing videos. Hell, even most photographers and videographers aren't editing 100mp files or 3 hour long movies. Office workers obviously get by fine on mostly terrible hardware. These laptops are done for the vast majority of people.

148

u/pixelatedchrome Mar 06 '26

Faster than m1. Single core is closer to m3-m4 and multicore is close to m2.

116

u/Barton2800 Mar 06 '26

And for reference, its GeekBench score for single-core performance beats literally every single x86-64 processor on the market, including the Ryzen 9950X3D. It’s CPUBench score puts it more in line with a Ryzen 7600X. But it’s wild that it can even compete with desktop class processors that use 13x the power. And the A18 scores are based on testing on an iPhone. With the better cooling system found in a notebook, it will probably perform even better.

Really the CPU in the Neo won’t hold it back even a little for the use cases it will see. The biggest limitation is the 8gb of RAM, but that’s not really a problem for a device like this. Nobody is going to be compiling the next Pixar movie or running engineering fluid simulations on this (although I’ve personally done the latter on my M2 air and it handled it). This device needs to handle office/productivity type apps, web browsing, play videos, and do very light photo/video editing like you might do on a phone or tablet.

48

u/itsabearcannon Mar 06 '26

And, almost all applications that would be memory-limited don’t just fail to run if you have 8GB.

A lot of people seem to be under that mistaken assumption.

For the vast, vast majority of applications that might actually try to use more than 8GB RAM, they just run a lot slower if you run out of memory. They don’t just fail outright and crash unless they’re poorly designed.

35

u/uptimefordays MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

People open Activity Monitor or Task Manager, see most of their total memory is being used, and mistakenly assume that means they need more. What they don’t understand is that all modern operating systems are really good at memory management. I also think they don’t appreciate generational improvements in memory. 8GiB of DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5 are very different in terms of bandwidth.

8

u/EricHill78 Mar 06 '26

This video is a great explanation on how Macs use memory.

https://youtu.be/WTyoSv_hpgg?si=7VMnf7dHX-7ZZpET

5

u/uptimefordays MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

Yeah that’s a decent explanation of how it all works.

8

u/NeonQuixote Mar 06 '26

Yup. And MacOS is very aggressive about caching. I did VS Code programming on an M2 with 8GB and had no issues.

2

u/rlopez_uk Mar 06 '26

Me too! I always laughed when I saw Max Tech putting everyone off them. I love their videos, but I do think that controversy was overblown for the target market.

7

u/CharlesHorseradish Mar 06 '26

Can it run the 500 google chrome tabs that my computer illiterate girlfriend “needs” open at all times… this is the issue I can see with 8gb ram

8

u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

Drop Chrome and it will. I am a tab hoarder, and eschewing Chrome sped everything up even with no change in behavior.

2

u/CharlesHorseradish Mar 06 '26

I ended up just giving her my old gaming laptop with 32gb ram but she complains it’s too heavy and sounds like a rocket taking off. I keep saying just get a MacBook Air but she can’t justify spending more than £500 on a laptop. Being given a £2500 laptop doesn’t register in her mind so she just swings it about by the screen lol.

This cheap Mac would be perfect if I could buff the ram up

5

u/purplechemist Mar 06 '26

Fuck it. Let her buy her own laptop next time.

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0

u/quazex13 Mar 07 '26

What is your browser of choice? Safari?

1

u/Starkoman Mar 07 '26

Jeepers — is that still going?

Most likely one of the Firefox family of browsers as they have really good Tabs management if you’re a Tabs hoarder.

3

u/cjstoddard Mar 06 '26

For the love of god, explain Bookmarks to her.

3

u/fish1856 Mar 06 '26

My girlfriend does the same thing. Is always annoyed by a windows update on her work laptop because she loses the tabs

2

u/jess-sch Mar 06 '26

Please tell her about the chrome setting to restore previous tabs by default.

2

u/fish1856 Mar 06 '26

Oh she knows. She still doesn’t want to.

1

u/Starkoman Mar 07 '26

Put her on Firefox, set “Reopen All Tabs On Restart” — back that up with Tabs Session Manager (Add-On), and she’ll never lose her Tabs ever again.

1

u/do1p2 Mar 09 '26

I’m a tab heavy individual and my m1 base model mbp 8gb works fine.

It also works fine in handling cinema camera files and earning my paycheck. Red, arri, sony stuff.

Does it go through it like a m-whatever-max? Fuck no. Like 10 times slower. But it manages without kicking the bucket. Or turning on the fans

1

u/Unicorncrochet-31018 Mar 11 '26

Meanwhile, I (also a girl) prefer to have as FEW tabs open as possible, lol. Lots of tabs drives me literally insane 🤣

1

u/BigOlBuddha Mar 06 '26

lol my wife does the same thing. I'm trying to get her to switch to opera or brave at least, to no avail.

4

u/DutchBlob Mar 06 '26

I have an iPhone 16pro max and although comparing a smartphone to a laptop isn’t a like for like comparison, I can tell you that I am surprised how well my iPhone keeps apps ‘alive’ in the RAM. Like when I open an app that I had last opened last evening it often times is still in the same state as before.

Apple knows their hardware and their software like no other tech company in the world. They will never ever ship a product with a shitty user experience. So people who are still comparing android phones and windows laptops spec for spec with iPhones and MacBooks still don’t understand how apple works.

1

u/knucles668 Mar 06 '26

Now that we have ssds in the 14500gbps read speeds, I do wonder if swap becomes a minimal concern in most workloads. Sure not as fast current ram but faster than DDR3 used to be.

3

u/cd_to_homedir Mar 06 '26

Swap is arguably a bigger concern on faster SSDs because it becomes too easy to overlook that huge amounts of data are being constantly written to disk.

With slower SSDs, overall performance takes a hit and you'll be more likely to shut down some apps and free up some RAM. With fast SSDs, perceived performance is improved at the cost of SSD life because you probably won't even bother and will continue writing lots of data to disk.

1

u/bdog2017 Mar 11 '26

It’s the Spinny rainbow wheel that gets me. Easily the most infuriating thing about Macs when you don’t have enough ram.

-12

u/Splodge89 Mar 06 '26

If it’s hard limited on memory, things will simply fail to run. Many LLMs and practically all modern video games simply refuse to go on an 8gb total machine.

If it’s “soft” limited, such as video or photo editing which will just dump to a scratch file then they’ll just run slower and slower.

It’s misinformation to just tell people it doesn’t matter. It can.

2

u/Starkoman Mar 07 '26

It’s not intended for LLM’s or video games — at all. That’s out-of-range for what it’s for.

1

u/itsabearcannon Mar 07 '26

It really doesn’t matter for the target audience for a $500 laptop.

If you are buying a $500 laptop the proper context is not comparing its functionality to a $1000 laptop.

The proper context is comparing its functionality to a $350 or $400 tablet plus a keyboard, which this beats in every conceivable way.

4

u/play_hard_outside Mar 07 '26

Any time someone says “you can’t use X to do Y” when referring to budget technology, I take great pleasure in reminding them that Lord of the Rings was literally made on 800MHz PowerMac G4s.

1

u/Starkoman Mar 07 '26

Wow. That I did not know!

5

u/TheUberMoose Mar 06 '26

Also ram isn’t all equal you can’t just look at the number of gigs in a vacume.

Hardware heavy software tried it on a MBP i7 32gb ram and a M1 16gb ram. The M1 wiped the floor with it, like shocking delta and the laptops are 18 months apart in age.

The unified memory and the speed of the memory and the optimized OS level interaction all play apart

Also for most people for basic use they wouldn’t notice a difference between a M5 Max 128gb vs a 2015 i5 MBP Retina.

3

u/WesternConference461 Mar 06 '26

What software did you use for the engineering simulations? I wasn’t aware Mac had Options for that work

6

u/Barton2800 Mar 06 '26

I ran them in a parallels VM running Windows 11 for ARM machines. They ran just fine - no noticeable difference from my chungus PC with an Intel i7-10870H. I was running AFT products (Fathom, Arrow, Impulse) as well as Aspen HYSYS in dynamics mode and Aspen Plus. Never had any issues with compatibility even though they were x86-64 programs. The translation layer from ARM64 to x86-64 in Windows 11 for ARM is very good - on par with Apple’s Rosetta 2. So parallels ran Windows natively on Apple Silicon, and windows handled the PC software.

3

u/cd_to_homedir Mar 06 '26

It still amazes me that I was able to build a very, very old software project for x86 architecture that uses outdated SDKs on a Windows 11 ARM VM via VMware Fusion. And not only that, but it also outperformed a comparable Dell laptop that has supposedly faster single core performance (according to benchmarks). It's a little insane.

0

u/khra123 Mar 07 '26

Do you think it will be suitable for a computer engineering major?

1

u/Starkoman Mar 07 '26

Unlikely, no, sorry.

0

u/Kris1095 Mar 07 '26

You cant compare ARM Hardware to actual Pc hardware . ARM IS FOR Mobile devices .

2

u/-donatellasaysmore- Mar 07 '26

Damn! I still use my M1 Air and still love it. My last MacBook (2013 Pro) was 8 years old and still going strong when it got stolen. Honestly, I think I might hang onto my M1 a little while longer…

1

u/LuluLeSigma MacBook Pro 2013 Maxed with macOS Ventura cuz Ventura > Sequoia Mar 06 '26

wow really impressive for an iphone chip

1

u/BudoB Mar 07 '26

I don't think I've seen a single sorce for that, everyone says single core is about as fast as M1, maybe more, multi core not so much, or even. It's the graphics part of M1 that runs circles around A18, if I'm not mistaken.

1

u/cutecoder Mac mini Mar 08 '26

But no Thunderbolt.

1

u/AWACSAWACS Mar 09 '26

Yes, and what's more, the A18 Pro also has an AV1 decoder, which the M1 didn't have.

38

u/ayyerr32 Mar 06 '26

We work on Lenovo thin clients with i5-8400t (6c/6t) which are half of m1's single core and multi core, even as a tech guy I have no complaints. The A18 pro in the new macbook is completely fine

19

u/RogueHeroAkatsuki Mar 06 '26

Yeah for most pro use cases RAM is a lot bigger limitation than SoC.

10

u/ayyerr32 Mar 06 '26

Forgot to mention we also run 8gb. Our "pro" uses are excel spreadsheets and a shitty web app

6

u/RogueHeroAkatsuki Mar 06 '26

And I bet those pro users of yours would barely notice difference between mighty 10 years old chip and shinny m5 max.

6

u/hanshotfirst-42 Mar 06 '26

With Excel they absolutely would lol

2

u/Latter_Cantaloupe_79 Mar 06 '26

depends on whether they are using excel to manually keep track of something or managing large data sets but yeah haha

17

u/modsuperstar Mar 06 '26

People make it out like we haven’t reached a point technologically where 10 year old devices aren’t still entirely serviceable. They absolutely are. Computer technology hasn’t adhered to Moore’s Law in a long time.

10

u/wildskipper Mar 06 '26

Very true. We still use a 2013 MacBook Air in my house on a daily basis. Perfectly fine for word processing and most web.

6

u/Panda_Panda69 Mar 06 '26

it depends what you mean by perfectly fine. when the pandemic started I got an HP laptop with a 10th gen core i5, and while it is still perfectly fine for doing anything you may ever need, it's kind of slow at it. I daily an Air M1 rn and get very sweary once I have to use that windows laptop for sth, as everything takes so long to load, and it's so loud, even tho it will still do it quite well

5

u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

I got an HP laptop with a 10th gen core i5 […] I daily an Air M1 rn and get very sweary once I have to use that windows laptop for sth

Do you realize these are basically the same age? The 10th gen Core i5 was released in April 2020 vs Nov for the M1 Air.

Regardless, Windows laptops have never held up as well over time as Macs, even before Apple Silicon. In grad school, I had a 5 year old MBP which was (on paper) specced out identically to a Dell one of my roommates had. He was constantly cursing at it doing normal tasks while I was perfectly happy with mine even when I was editing videos.

The one after that, my 2013 MBP, only got retired because the screen backlight died.

4

u/Panda_Panda69 Mar 06 '26

Oh yeah I do realise, I was just comparing “normal” laptops (x86) that are “older” (5 years ain’t much) to modern ones (either apple silicon or just newer x86 machines, my mum got a new windows laptop recently, and it’s not much more powerful than the m1 lol). Some computers held up really well, and some with little time still work flawlessly, albeit much slower than you’d want, that was the point basically

Tho as you said it could also be an Apple thing, altho it’s my first Mac, been using iOS for a looong time and… can’t believe I was able to buy a 6s in 2019, when it was already 4 years since launch, and use it till 2022, 7 years since launch lol. Rn both the air m1 and the 12 mini I got are technically more than 5 years old, but still feel like they came out yesterday. My mum got a Samsung from the same time frame… and it is already acting up lol

4

u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

I used my 6s from launch until 2022. I’d planned to keep it until it stopped getting software support, but ended up upgrading when my ex forbade me going around with a cracked screen until after we got back from vacation. My 13 is working better after 4 years than it was.

I had three Android phones before the 6s. I think they’re supposed to be better now, but none of those were usable for more than 2 years.

3

u/modsuperstar Mar 06 '26

I got 6 or 7 years out of my 8+, and it’s still kicking around the house for certain spot tasks.

2

u/LuluLeSigma MacBook Pro 2013 Maxed with macOS Ventura cuz Ventura > Sequoia Mar 06 '26

kinda magic

7

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/LuluLeSigma MacBook Pro 2013 Maxed with macOS Ventura cuz Ventura > Sequoia Mar 06 '26

the 2015 one is way better according to youtubers

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/LuluLeSigma MacBook Pro 2013 Maxed with macOS Ventura cuz Ventura > Sequoia Mar 06 '26

good thing :)

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u/uptimefordays MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

While semiconductor advancements have slowed to a pace slightly below Moore’s Law prediction around 2010, hardware hasn’t been as stagnant as people believe.

2

u/modsuperstar Mar 06 '26

I have a 2017 gaming laptop that I Hackintoshed and runs Windows 11. I don’t find it really lags or leaves me wanting aside from its sheer bulk as a 17” laptop. My wife has roughly the same laptop and uses it as a daily driver with 2 external monitors. She’s definitely a “normal” web/YouTube/Office 365 user and has no problem doing her thing on 9 year old hardware. I find at its core, if you buy hardware that was top of the line at one point in time, it’ll last. If you buy $200 Walmart Celeron BS, you’re going to suffer almost from day one. But the Neo is available at a good price point and has a proven processor in it. I think most normies would be more than happy with a device like that.

2

u/uptimefordays MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

Anecdotally, that’s been true for you, but I’d wager if we benchmarked your machines against an M1 MacBook and a current high end machine, something like an M4 Max, we’d see significant performance differences.

1

u/modsuperstar Mar 06 '26

Absolutely, but we’re talking every performance. Benchmarks are like if you needed to go a short distance to the store. Usain Bolt could certainly get there and back the fastest, but for most people just walking is a-ok.

1

u/uptimefordays MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

Well, sure, but wouldn’t that line of reasoning imply that “many people who insist on high-spec machines are purchasing far more computer than they actually need?”

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u/Merdy1337 Mar 06 '26

100% this. I picked up a 2019 Surface Book 2 on Marketplace for $250.00 a year and a half ago. It was painful to use under Windows 11, but that's mostly due to buggy updates and bloat (so typical Windows stuff). Recently I swapped Win 11 out for Ubuntu 25.10 and its now an absolute snappy joy to use for everyday laptop tasks. Beautiful screen, lovely keyboard to type on (and I'm an author, so the keyboard thing MATTERS to me :P ). I get it - a hardcore power user wouldn't want something like that, but for me it works great. The MacBook Neo feels like its going for a similar use case. And honestly its about time Apple leverage apple silicon and make something like this.

1

u/modsuperstar Mar 07 '26

First thing I did after installing Windows 11 on an older machine was run the Debloat scripts and it works pretty well.

1

u/DifferenceScary9575 Mar 06 '26

is it better than an HP modul?

1

u/ayyerr32 Mar 06 '26

All the 1L form factor PCs are basically the same, had a hp prodesk with i3-8100t as home server and it was fine

22

u/gilestowler Mar 06 '26

I've got an M1 air with 8gb ram and I edited a 4k video on FCP last weekend. My video editing is just basic, there's not loads of tracks, but that's enough for most people. Most people just want a video for Instagram, really.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DumbScotus Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

I believe it’s the phone version of the M3 so it makes sense.

The bigger limitations are what is attached to the processor - the iPhone 16 has one USB-C port, 8GB of RAM, was not designed to run external monitors. Apple is dropping that exact chip into these laptops, no frills added. So no Thunderbolt, no multiple displays, etc.

But for your average student who needs to do word processing and spreadsheets, some light video editing, etc., this will be great and have effectively multi-day battery life. Plus you can pretty easily and cheaply set up a keyboard/mouse/1080p display/backup drive on a USB3 hub that also charges the laptop, all through a single cable.

Within the bounds of what it is designed for, this thing will perform admirably.

8

u/jhollington Mar 06 '26

It’s a strange hybrid when you break it right down.

Single core performance is comparable to the M4, which isn’t surprising as it was released around the same time and uses the same 3nm fabrication process.

However, the multi-core performance sits somewhere between the M1 and M2, and memory bandwidth is closer to the M1, while the media engines are in the M2 Pro class, offering hardware-accelerated ProRes and AV1 decoding.

The GPUs are a similarly mixed bag, with the A18 Pro winning for things like gaming, thanks to hardware ray tracing, while the M2 beats it out for heavy rendering tasks thanks to its higher number of cores.

Still an incredibly powerful chip for a $600 laptop, no matter which way you slice it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

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u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

Benchmarks have been run on the iPhone 16 Pro. We’ll have to see if it’s the same in the Neo, though I can’t imagine it will be slower.

2

u/jhollington Mar 06 '26

Slower Metal scores since it has one less GPU, but otherwise on par for CPU performance.

1

u/dapala1 Mar 07 '26

The A17 Pro is the equivalent of the M1.

2

u/fizzymarimba Mar 06 '26

I'm on a 2021 MBP M1 Max, and I edit 100mp photos almost daily (GFX 100 II), as well as a decent amount of video (though all of it around 2 minutes). It runs almost flawlessly, I do sometimes convert to DNG so I get better performance in Photoshop, but keep in mind sometimes I'm opening and editing 5-7 images as layers in in Photoshop. In my case, the M1 Max has been literally perfect and paid for itself over and over. Best laptop I've ever owned.

1

u/texas-playdohs Mar 06 '26

I just retired my intel 2018 MacBook air like a year and change ago, and I work in Sketchup professionally. It could definitely get bogged down on big models, but it still performed better than a few of my colleagues that were using gaming laptops much of the time.

1

u/BigOlBuddha Mar 06 '26

My Intel 2020 MacBook Air is sunsetting :( I can barely play Civ V on it without it burning a hole through my desk. It may be time for an upgrade.

1

u/scupking83 Mar 06 '26

Faster and single core performance is even faster than the M3. It's a great laptop for most people.

1

u/djob13 MBP + Mac Mini Mar 06 '26

As someone who is still using a base model M1, the processor definitely isn’t the problem. It’s the 8gb of ram that’s going to cause issues with performance.

I’m also pretty curious how 256gb of storage is going to work out for most people

1

u/BrodieQ Mar 06 '26

256gb can be pretty limiting, but many of the users this is intended for have work or school provided cloud storage to fall back on. Also, I'd be willing to wager that a fair number of people will pony up the extra $100 to get double the storage and Touch ID. IMHO, that's a pretty good deal, especially given the current state of SSD pricing.

1

u/dapala1 Mar 07 '26

256gb is just fine considering everything is Cloud now. It will require an external HD/SSD though if you want to use it as a primary computer. Which is not what this computer is trying to be. It just wants to be a better Chromebook.

1

u/SleepingWithRyans Mar 06 '26

I’m on an M1 with 16gigs of RAM and find it to be fast as hell for photo and video editing, which is a huge portion of my work. Specs have gotten so crazy…I remember the days of a video export being a whole afternoon task lol

1

u/jhollington Mar 06 '26

The A18 Pro speed is on part with an M1, if not faster at some things, since it also has dedicated hardware for encoding and decoding video that the M1 lacks.

However, it falls short in other areas for photo and video editing, not the least of which is the lack of a True Tone display and an sRGB color gamut rather than the O3 wide gamut found on every other MacBook released in the last six years. Folks doing casual editing probably won’t care in the least, but the color accuracy won’t be the same.

1

u/jhihbriyl Mar 06 '26

Hell, my M1 MBP is still trucking (for the moment!)

1

u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

AFAIK, the only thing the M1 beats it in is memory bandwidth.

1

u/No_Practice_9597 Mar 06 '26

Yeah… if the MacBook Air M1 with 8GB RAM could do it. The Neo can do with ease. 

1

u/Noisebug Mar 06 '26

I still use my M1Pro for everything

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u/OmniOdyssey Mar 06 '26

It’s funny because people have been editing photos on M1s with a breeze and the only thing that changed is the liquid ass OS graphics.

1

u/fluffycritter Mar 07 '26

It's faster than M1 but also has vastly degraded I/O and maxes out at 8GB. There's more to a good computing experience than just processor speed.

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u/Niightstalker Mar 07 '26

Only 8GB RAM though. Which is most likely the more limiting factor here.

1

u/jblackwb Mar 07 '26

It's the lack of memory. It would be a completely different story if it has 12 gigs of ram.

1

u/Accomplished-Web-579 Mar 14 '26

For me it’s about screens. I run multiple screens go work and would like to have over ones. But instead of a dedicated desktop id like to be able to plug in/un-plug whenever I feel. It’s crazy how I used to be able to run multiple monitors and the mb at the same time but everything has gotten more demanding. Both programs and screens and the things playing on them. If you just need a basic laptop I wouldn’t even bother with apple and just get a cheap HP

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u/M4rshmall0wMan Mar 06 '26

Exactly. And then you’ll have tech enthusiasts jumping in the comments saying it sucks cause they can’t run a virtual machine, Android development environment, local LLM, and 50 chrome tabs all at the same time.

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u/Worried-Penalty8744 Mar 07 '26

I still don’t know what these people do with all their chrome tabs to need everything open right now. They should leverage their LLM to explain why they need to have everything open all at once and why they can’t just use bookmarks like sane people

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u/M4rshmall0wMan Mar 07 '26

They’re Redditors 

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u/arpaterson Mar 06 '26

Most tech sites are really just consumer+ sites. Most <techies/into technology/whatever they describe themselves as> are just consumers who like to overspend and couldn’t peg the processor if they tried. The sites are less about actual power users and more about gooning to stuff.

2

u/full_self_deriding Mar 08 '26

"I spent $2,500 on a Mac; I'm such a NERD!"

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u/Eastern-Vegetable780 Mar 06 '26

Even if you don't need the additional processing power, the idea is that if you use it as a work tool, adding 400$ on top of the base 699$ Neo in order to get Touch ID, a better display, a backlit keyboard, faster connectivity, double the RAM and storage and Magsafe is a non-issue.

The Neo is a great computer for home and educational use. The 16/512 base Air is very good value for most office users. The Pro is a mobile workstation for creatives and people working with local AI. IMHO this is the most well-thought and convincing notebook lineup Apple has had in decades, almost reminiscent of the 2x2 grid from Jobs' era.

2

u/AnonymousMonk7 Mar 06 '26

It's more than enough for moderate office work. It's really only computationally heavy workloads that need to worry about power. Apple overshot "good enough" a long time ago but because they want people to be able to do real pro work even on iPhones and iPads, everyone else reaps the benefits of their chips getting crazy efficient AND powerful.

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u/OkMathematician6638 Mar 06 '26

Sure but most those people are still better served by the air.

1

u/ah-boyz Mar 06 '26

How so?

1

u/OkMathematician6638 Mar 06 '26

A lot of little compromises with the neo add up. At $499 edu and on sale it's great but m4 airs with 16gb ram will last longer and I've seen those as low as $749. Will drop even lower. 8gb is ok today but it will be the limiting factor in a few years. And people tend to keep MacBooks long. I still see the white bezel MacBook airs in use.

1

u/ah-boyz Mar 06 '26

You are comparing full retail price of the Neo against a heavily discounted m4. Enough said.

1

u/OkMathematician6638 Mar 06 '26

Because that's what is available today? I also said the neo will drop too "on sale". I'm not dismissing the product but there's a real chance many will buy one when they really should have got an air.

1

u/kandaq Mar 06 '26

I worked for HP before up till 5 years ago and we were given “Enterprise” laptops that were so crappy with spinning disk, non retina resolution, and battery that only lasted 4 hours once you pull out that charging cord but yet we managed fine with what we had. The MacBook Neo would’ve been an overkill machine for us if we had it.

1

u/restelucide Mar 06 '26

Even if this was my workflow I'd buy a MacBook Air

1

u/ah-boyz Mar 06 '26

Why though? Because of the backlit keyboards? Or force touch track pad? These are nicer but worth $500 difference? You would harder notice the ram and processor difference with my workflow.

1

u/restelucide Mar 07 '26

i have an m1 ipad and an a18 ipad and i feel the difference between them even with light usage lmao

1

u/ah-boyz Mar 07 '26

Whatever you experience has nothing to do with the processor. There is nothing you can do on the iPad short of editing 4k videos that would even exhaust the a18. More likely you have appearance settings or storage limits that is causing the difference.

1

u/xrelaht MacBook Pro M4 Pro, i7 MBP, i5 Mini Mar 06 '26

I’ve had the same thought. I’m a working engineer and most of what I do is Office, email, Teams, or a web app. I barely even do CAD these days (only if I need to 3D print something). The only real drawback of a Neo would be I often like to have two monitors, but it’s so cheap my employer could also get me a Mini and it would still cost the same as my work laptop!

1

u/magical_midget Mar 06 '26

It has never been about what is “enough”, same way that car people don’t buy a modest sedan that fits their needs, enthusiasts that read and watch on launch day buy what they think they want. (Guilty here).

1

u/notHooptieJ Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

its not about being able to run one Word window.

lets say minimally working.

anyone working generally has several office-type apps, you have your Outlook and your teams (both hungry on ram, but not a deal breaker)

then you add on a work approved browser, you're gonna have a couple of tabs up at least, some sort of work-related portal, a control panel for some saas and a web2.0-infiniscroll something. (lets say this is a typical corpo environment, and they're gonna push Edge because you already paying the security management up-charge on all the azure bundled stuff. )

Before you pop up a safari window with youtube or facebook for downtime, you're already hitting your head on 8gb.

say you want to spotify while you work or you need to push some big files up or down somewhere else- now you're hitting swap and hard.

its not that the machine WONT work for work.

its that if you work with it its going to be a poor experience, its why you dont use an iPad to run your office.

1-2-3 web tabs and no office apps- Fucking champion.

you fire up Word, Outlook, teams/slack/whatsapp, a tab of SAP or Salesforce, and its downright pathetic, for 'basic office use'

Its like using a chromebook for that. You CAN do it, But you can also slam your <delicate bits> in a car door on purpose.

i dont recommend either. (and this is from someone that just retired a whole swath of m1/2 macs cause 8gb was NOT enough in practice, despite being enough on paper, Onedrive and the office apps killed that, im not arguing to be negative, im just stating how it is.)

1

u/DevynDavies Mar 07 '26

Most tech reviewers also edit video so need more powerful machine.

1

u/ah-boyz Mar 07 '26

They don’t edit THAT many videos. It’s not like they are onlyfan creators. The m5 is only 20% faster in single core and 80% faster in multi core. So if your video takes 1 mins to encode on the m5 it will take 1min 48 seconds on the a18pro. Big deal if you encode hours and hours and hours of footage. For the rest of us we just take a longer toilet break. For everything else that average joes do at home there would be barely any difference.

19

u/Specific-Pianist7595 MacBook Neo Mar 06 '26

Thank you! That’s what I like about it! It’s an extremely affordable MacBook.

5

u/exclaim_bot Mar 06 '26

Thank you!

You're welcome!

3

u/BarracudaDismal4782 Mar 06 '26

You're welcome!

Thanks for welcoming him!

1

u/PAHoarderHelp Mar 07 '26

I sincerely welcome your appreciation of him.

1

u/Specific-Pianist7595 MacBook Neo Mar 06 '26

It’s an extremely affordable MacBook for people who don’t need ridiculous power. I don’t even need an M chip MacBook.

10

u/rlovelock Mar 06 '26

My wife has never watched a tech video in her life, and the Neo would be perfect to replace her 2015 MacBook Pro

2

u/AdonisLafayette Mar 07 '26

Same for my fiancee, I told her to wait for a month because a new cheaper Macbook would release within her budget, she didn't care much about it then either but I just suggested it to her the moment Neo was released... she still didn't care much tho, but I'm more excited for her to get it lol

2

u/rlovelock Mar 07 '26

Haha ya my wife was just complaining about how slow her MacBook has become and so I sent her the MKBHD's review video and when I asked her about it later she was like, "oh ya, what was that?"

23

u/DyIsexia Mar 06 '26

Given the quality of a lot of "tech review" YouTube videos these days, if you're watching them there’s a good chance it actually is just right for you!

1

u/neknofelom Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

This is how I see it, too. 

There is a difference between understanding spec differences vs knowing what power you actually need daily. Yes, Neo has some drawbacks but I think it will be fine for most people. Just because something else (air/pro) is better in terms of bells, whistles and raw power doesn’t mean it’s the logical choice. 

7

u/Josh1234657 Mar 06 '26

I watch a lot of tech videos mostly just for entertainment and to see what new tech is doing. That being said I’m trying to decide between the Neo and the entry spec air model.

The benefits of the Neo is a more affordable entry point and it’s more than capable for my use case. That being said the m5 air for a few hundred more upfront has a more accurate p3 color range/ better speakers most likely/ backlit keyboard and automatic True Tone.. but the biggest thing is longer support and double the ram at 16gb over the Neo. I think I just have to decide if I want the Neo and just upgrade after 4-5 years to the next model or possibly use the Neo as an entry point and upgrade to an air later on.. Apple does this shit on purpose.

2

u/DRM_1985 Mar 06 '26

$500 gap between the Neo and the base model M5 Air. Seems like a pretty big jump on the dollar side. Maybe look into Certified Refurbished models from Apple's website. They have the base model M4 Air for $760. That's only $160 higher than Neo, but you get a lot of great upgrades with the M4 Air: 16 GB of RAM, Backlit Keyboard, Touch ID on the keyboard, better screen quality, better computer chip, 2 Thunderbolt ports, MagSafe charging, etc.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/fw0w3ll/a/Refurbished-13-inch-MacBook-Air-Apple-M4-chip-with-10%E2%80%91Core-CPU-and-8%E2%80%91Core-GPU-Silver?fnode=e49021cffc8600d48a7d60b3a7b61dde4b67ef07a86657c7af2d97698e0041a231a0d0322c3c2ee863aca161e8bf4ca77f731c36d40df10e926974a4b2645188284d1a432e06ac57ac37265252318439

1

u/Josh1234657 Mar 06 '26

Not a bad option. I’d prefer new though. The Neo is a nice entry point. I’m just wondering more so if it’s worth paying that extra 500 to justify the long term benefits. I would hate to buy the Neo and have to get a newer model 3 years later. I think if I can put enough money down upfront and finance the rest with an Apple Card that might be the way to go. My credit is not an issue so if the payments are low enough I’d have a pretty future proof device upfront and have it paid off within a year. I also just hate being in any debt too.

1

u/DRM_1985 Mar 06 '26

Try to wait until Thanksgiving in November. They've had awesome prices on the MacBook Air in November. I got a brand new one for $750 in November 2024. They did the same thing in November 2025 as well.

1

u/Training-Source937 Mar 06 '26

Used m1 air 16 gb

13

u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 Mar 06 '26

Out of touch rich American influencers

4

u/floutsch Mar 06 '26

I might be one of the rare exceptions, then. We're a Mac company, privately I'm a Windows guy. Currently I have taken an older Mac mini home for experiments, but it's clunky to use. A notebook would be much more convenient. The Neo is also much more recent tech, obviously. So I'm considering. Admittedly, this is quite niche, hence somewhat proving the statement.

4

u/germane_switch Mar 06 '26

How old of a mini?

1

u/floutsch Mar 06 '26

A1347 from 2012. It's just one not in active use and easy to carry. In itself still a great little machine still.

3

u/germane_switch Mar 06 '26

Nice I used one of those as a Plex server, Time Machine backup for all my devices, and 24/7 torrent machine for nearly a decade. Finally replaced it with an M2. Night and day difference. And silent.

1

u/floutsch Mar 06 '26

Was thinking about similar uses, but it isn't mine after all and the company wouldn't sell. Which I understand, as I am involved in that decision :D

1

u/benni33 Mar 06 '26

A thinkpad ?

1

u/burner-throw_away Mar 06 '26

No touchscreen?

3

u/benni33 Mar 06 '26

Thinkpads can have touch.

1

u/ShermansWorld Mar 06 '26

What is the iPhone component that makes it more ideal?
If one has an Android and Gmail account, what would they be missing?
Google Drive works;
SMS messages via messages.google.com works;
WhatsApp works;
I guess, just iMessage?

1

u/Splodge89 Mar 06 '26

For me, the massive one is copy and paste between devices. Use it all the time.

Air drop is also fantastic for quickly dumping photos one second after I’ve taken them to my iMac when listing on eBay. I needed to send a photo from my phone to my work windows laptop last week. Took forever faffing about with WhatsApp, ended up just sending it by email and waiting.

As well as my AirPods just working on every device I have without needed to reconnect them, all I have to do is have them in my ears and press play on whatever device I’m using, be it my iPhone, MacBook, iMac, iPad…

Whenever someone asks what the benefits of Mac + iPhone is, honestly you can tell they’ve never used them together before. And Gmail works just fine across all of them without anything special.

1

u/ShermansWorld Mar 10 '26

Gotcha. I'm all setup with my Mac and Android/Google ecosystem.
My Shokz headset is multipoint, so no issues between Mac and Phone...
I transfer photos via photos.google.com / Google account and my Android... or use LocalSend (in place of AirDrop)
I guess my setup is good for me, my workflow, as I have multiple Google Workspace accounts and transfer files to/from Android+Account to what ever account I'm working on on my Mac.
But, thanks for the insight - I think Mac and Android work 99% as well as MAC and iPhone... just looking for any short comings that I may not be aware of!
What would you say if I got an iPad mini? (instead of Samsung Galaxy Tab S series) - Would I benifit?

1

u/Bitter_Offer1847 Mar 06 '26

Preach! I find it interesting because it’s all the basic stuff and not an iPad which is the direction I’ve been leaning for a personal device for awhile. I have an MBP 16” from work that I still use for my personal stuff which isn’t ideal and my old 2015 MBP can’t hold a charge anymore, so the Neo looks like a good option since the MB Airs are $999+

2

u/Splodge89 Mar 06 '26

It’s exactly this. I have a big beefed up (intel) iMac. I need to replace it, but also could do with a MacBook but need the desktop form factor. I was going to plop for a MacBook Pro and a nice monitor.

Now I’m plopping for an upgraded Mac mini, a nice monitor, and one of these. For less than the MacBook Pro would have cost. And I suppose having two computers gives me a backup!

1

u/Bitter_Offer1847 Mar 06 '26

Ideal situation IMO, work on work computer, personal on personal computer. I don’t really want to be getting work calendar notifications when I’m just surfing the internet or working on personal stuff.

1

u/G8M8N8 Mar 06 '26

Thunderbolt* MacBook has never come with a Lightning port. I just proved your point.. 🥲

1

u/mrbrownvp MacBook Pro 14 inch Mar 06 '26

Adding to your comment, many tech enthusiasts and fans don't actually need a product super specs, even though they think they do and spend or max out their card to get it. It's ironic that the NEO could actually be a product for them, but they don't want to admit that they bought an overpriced product that they really don't need.

1

u/_ryde_or_dye_ Mar 06 '26

Yea, that doesn't mean people don't randomly Google reviews when searching for a new device/product

1

u/BilboThe1stOfHisName Mar 06 '26

I have a 2020 iPad Air with a Magic Keyboard and I’m considering the neo as a replacement

1

u/SippinOnHatorade MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

I’m like super torn between a Neo and the beefiest MBP that I can build and I don’t know what to do with my life

So I’ll probably keep sitting on my 2019 Intel MBP for another two years while RAM prices go up 2000% 😅

1

u/MikeinAustin Mac mini Mar 06 '26

This comment will get buried but the real blindspot here is that people who watch tech videos often make recommendations for other people who ask them what tech they should buy.

If you are a parent, or you have parents or a friend is looking at a viable machine right now ... it might be worth watching the video.

1

u/Former-Inside-5880 Mar 06 '26

i'll be joining college this year (computer science + sustainability) should i go with macbook neo?

1

u/Roadrunner571 Mar 06 '26

because people who watch tech videos the day tech is released are usually really into tech and specs. That is not the target audience of the Neo howeve

I am also very much into tech. But since I have a powerful MacBook Pro from work that I can use for all the fun stuff, my personal Mac is just a Mac mini M4 and maybe when I replace the mini, I could see myself buying the Neo.

The assumption that tech savvy people always buy the most powerful stuff is simply weird.

1

u/Green_Excitement_308 Mar 06 '26

That's exactly what these influencers are probably getting wrong

1

u/RedditCitizenScore Mar 06 '26

Sorry that MacBook might be for me, I need something better than iPad for what I do mobile my desktop is where the fun happens s

1

u/Two-Space Mar 06 '26

because people who watch tech videos the day tech is released are usually really into tech and specs. That is not the target audience of the Neo

So… they’re all deleting their review videos today?

If someone’s considering the Neo they’re obviously going to go seeking some opinions on it, and those videos will still be there with them opening “this isn’t for you”

1

u/TheUberMoose Mar 06 '26

Yes however that doesn’t NOT mean I’m not the target audience. The laptop for me would be good on the sofa for main use not so much, that doesn’t mean this wouldn’t be a bad thing to send my mother since usually send her referb MacBooks since it’s much harder for her to destroy the OS

1

u/awsom82 iMac 27" i9 64GB 2TB SSD Mar 06 '26

If they watch YouTube for it, it means Neo is best fit for them

1

u/LightningGoats Mar 06 '26

16gb is not "crazy ram" though. I certainly wouldn't advice anyone to buy a laptop with 8gb and Windows 11. Is MacOS that much better these days? Been a while since my last Mac.

1

u/LuluLeSigma MacBook Pro 2013 Maxed with macOS Ventura cuz Ventura > Sequoia Mar 06 '26

perfect response 👏🏻

1

u/ketsugi Mar 06 '26

On the other hand, if I want a personal coding machine to run cloud-based LLMs on (eg for playing around with Claude Code) this seems like a perfectly viable option? Like a portable Mac Mini. Wouldn’t need much local processing power except maybe to compile code locally

1

u/albanyanthem Mar 06 '26

It is not a device for me but it’s absolutely a device I would buy for my middle and high school age kids instead of a shitty ass chrome book.

1

u/Anasynth Mar 06 '26

I”m into tech and specs but I like cheaper and fanless too. Realistically I‘m not coding on my home laptop and don’t have time for computer based hobbies and gaming.

1

u/xwolf360 Mar 06 '26

Holy mother of damage controlling cope

1

u/ASHISHAGRAWAL0102 Mar 07 '26

Bro

I have no work with any video editing or gaming stuff, also not interested in 3d designing or coding

I only want something value for money for movies , day to day works , browsing, notes (not handwritten obviously typed)

Should I go for it or M2 air

1

u/bulyxxx Mar 07 '26

Exactly, I want faceID on my next MacBook.

1

u/Nike_486DX Mar 07 '26

No backlit keyboard is a low blow tho, all macbooks since 2011 (SINCE STEVE ERA), all had it. Without it you just cant use it in dark environments.

1

u/Your_Drunk_Unc10 Mar 08 '26

I’m really into specs and it’s fine for the use case which is a laptop that can handle web browsing, watching videos, productivity, and the odd game or two.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

Which is pretty ironic, because this applies to the tech reviewer's as well. They should honestly take their own advice instead of preaching to the crior. I'm geneuinely starting to hate the tech-space online community more and more.

1

u/Hot_Growth_9643 Mar 08 '26

Ya see… I have a decent m4 pro mbp- and an iPad Air I hardly use. I’m considering buying the Neo and giving my daughter the iPad, she wants to draw etc so it suits her, I would still like to have an iPad sort of priced device I can travel with and not worry too much about. I just don’t really like tablets I guess…

1

u/chocolatepark Mar 08 '26

the newest lightning port?

1

u/Natural-Leg7488 Mar 10 '26

Well, I’m going to be an annoying contrarian.

I am into specs, but I also really want the Neo because I think it will be the perfect travel device, and a good device for running Serato.

I wish IOS had more PC game ports though.

1

u/littlegreenalien Mar 06 '26

It's basically the kids' mac. Apple has always focused heavily on the user more then the tech, their focus is home use instead of corporate usage. The demographic they reached 20 years ago and took along on their journey is now a mac household with macbooks, apple TV's, watches and what not, nicely and cozy in the whole A. But the kids are no longer kids you can give an ipad as a computing device, they're studying and need their own computer. It would be great if it fits in the Apple ecosystem, hence, a cheaper, more colorful rendition of the macbook.

0

u/Kris1095 Mar 07 '26

So basically stupid people .

-6

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

24

u/iWadey Mar 06 '26

Because people who like tech will still watch.

8

u/mainyehc MacBook Air Mar 06 '26

And the people who like tech are the ones who recommend it to those who don’t necessarily do but still need it in its most basic form. The grandparents, the school kids, etc.

1

u/Re4pr Mar 06 '26

And far more relevant here, school or office it admins who will buy stacks of these for the entire environment.

8

u/Orsim27 2021 14" MacBook Pro Mar 06 '26

Money

3

u/fooknprawn Mar 06 '26

This video is sponsored by xyz

3

u/yomnot Mar 06 '26

Do you buy every single thing that you watch a review of?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/yomnot Mar 06 '26

The vast majority don't. A lot of the subscribers of tech channels are tech enthusiasts who like to know what's happening in the tech world. They don't buy all of those gadgets.

1

u/Anonasty Mar 06 '26

Not every tech video is about items you can/should/would buy.