A review of the new MacBook Neo.
After several months using a very old MacBook Pro to get a feel for macOS, I have for the first time ever purchased a Mac of my own: an indigo MacBook Neo. Spilling ink writing about how the MacBook Neo fares in performance benchmarks is ultimately a pointless exercise, yet tech reviewers do this without fail every time they touch one of the things. Of course the MacBook Neo is slower than the MacBook Air! It also retails for slightly more than half the cost, or exactly half the cost with an education discount if you or a friend have access to a college email address.
The specs sheet is important only for context. It's not just that the Neo is an entry-level laptop using an iPhone SoC.System-on-a-chip It's that its SoC was introduced in the previous generation of iPhones in 2024. It's that its SoC features a disabled core unlike any iPhone's SoC, which means Apple may be pulling them out of TSMC's reject bin. It's that the A18 Pro shares a microarchitecture with the M4, but every other portable product in Apple's lineup—the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and even Vision Pro—had gotten updates to M5 chips some time between fall 2025 and the Neo's release date. Did you know that Apple released an updated Studio Display on the same day the Neo was released, yet the screen features the faster and newer A19 Pro? This is neither criticism nor excuse. It's simply what the MacBook Neo is.
Apple tried to make the minimum viable MacBook and they inadvertently made the ideal laptop. This should not be conflated with best or fastest or lightest or any other superlative. The MacBook Neo is the ideal laptop in the way the Toyota Corolla is the ideal car. If you see the iPhone SoC in the specs sheet and scoff because it won't render 16K HDR video or train your AI porn generator fast enough, then you were never in the market for this in the first place. If you scoff at the Toyota Corolla because its towing capacity is insufficient for your boat and the base model isn't luxurious enough to include a built-in Sybian, then you were never in the target market for it.
But that's a cop-out, isn't it? The Neo's reception has been pretty much universally positive, but the reviews often come attached with the thought-terminating caveat that the Neo is for college students who need to save money or grandmas who are bad at technology. I, however, will assert that the Neo is still the ideal laptop even for most tech enthusiasts. The dually pickup owner commutes to work a hundred times as often as he tows his boat, after all.
The secret is that the personal computer is a solved problem. Even the Neo despite its modest specs is capable of rendering 4K video reasonably quickly. The concept of throwing hundreds or thousands of dollars at annual upgrades for newer, faster, and smaller is still hanging on, a relic from a past when it mattered that a computer was faster that was often true even in the 2000s. In his review of Conroe—the first-generation Core 2 Duo—in July 2006, Anand Lal Shimpi wrote:
"Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 didn't lose a single benchmark in our comparison; not a single one. In many cases, the $183 Core 2 Duo E6300 actually outperformed Intel's previous champ: the Pentium Extreme Edition 965. In one day, Intel has made its entire Pentium D lineup of processors obsolete. Intel's Core 2 processors offer the sort of next-generation micro-architecture performance leap that we honestly haven't seen from Intel since the introduction of the P6."[1]
It's been twenty years since Conroe. We've seen such a generational leap in the PC market maybe twice since then: AMD with Zen,[2] and Apple silicon in Macs.
The tech press collectively nutted over the performance of the M1. It's understandable: not only were the first M1 MacBooks trouncing the x86 competition in native ARM workloads, they were also competitive and occasionally outright faster running x86 code via Apple's Rosetta emulator.[3] The M1 in a vacuum was a huge improvement over prior Macs' Intel CPUs, but seeing meaningful improvement at all was a welcome change because Intel had stagnated. Some Macs in 2019 were using Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs, which was the fourth consecutive generation of the Skylake core that had been initially released in 2015.
On average, the Neo and its A18 Pro SoC are pretty much on par with the M1 MacBooks that the tech reviewer-industrial complex couldn't shut up about, and in the kinds of single-threaded workloads that, say, make webpages load fast, the A18 Pro is often significantly faster. The Neo is not as exciting as the M1 MacBooks were, of course, because the Neo does not tread new ground. Not even its price is new ground because used M1 MacBooks are around $500 on eBay.
Neither the M1 nor more generally the amount of performance that the M1 offers is obsolete after five and a half years. Thus, the Neo's equal capabilities mean it not only is but can be a compelling option in 2026. Contrast with Conroe: it made the Pentium D obsolete the moment it was available, but by 2012 five and half years later both Conroe itself and the amount of performance Conroe had on tap[4] made for a frustratingly sluggish experience, and using it to play games or do serious work was no longer practical. Apple silicon hasn't been like that yet.[5]
The reason that computers remain usable for so much longer, the reason that Apple can put a binned iPhone SoC into a cheap laptop without hurting their premium brand image, the reason that the MacBook Neo as a product can exist at all, is because the vast majority of what people use the computer for can be trivially handled by a phone processor. Browsing the web is a solved problem. Email is a solved problem. Word processing is a solved problem. Spreadsheets are a solved problem. Video playback is a solved problem. Minimum system requirements for most software haven't drastically increased in a long time as microprocessors continued to improve anyway. They got faster, but perhaps more importantly they also got more efficient. Workloads that previously required a workstation could be done by a desktop, and then a laptop, and then a netbook. Phone processors were next in line to exceed the minimum performance threshold that a PC needs, and the A18 Pro proves it's been exceeded comfortably. It'll take years for the threshold to catch back up.[6]
While the A18 Pro is literally an iPhone SoC, in some sense the M1 is too. It's the A14 out of an iPhone but bigger: more cores, a wider memory bus, a small overclock, and—likely more important than those combined—a nice selection of Thunderbolt ports rather than a lonely USB 2.0 port. The distinction between an A-series phone SoC and M-series laptop SoC is more marketing than technical, and there isn't anything particularly special about the microarchitecture in the A14 either. The iPhone 12 offered only modest improvements compared to the prior year's iPhone 11 and its A13 SoC. The M1's performance came as such a shock to the tech press because the prior eight generations of Apple's custom cores all the way back to the Swift cores in the iPhone 5's A6 could only be found in iOS devices, and conversely iOS devices could only use these custom cores. There was no way to do an apples-to-apples[7] comparison with Android devices, let alone use these processors in general-purpose computers that can run any arbitrary software.
Those iPhone performance numbers never mattered anyway because the iPhone is a toy that can't do real work. Using a touchscreen is a miserable experience compared to a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad, but even good peripherals can't save the iPhone because iOS is only allowed to run one Apple-approved application at a time. Apple had been sitting on the fastest CPU architecture in the world, and it got no respect from tech enthusiasts because Apple didn't respect it enough to let it do real computing. It's why it's inaccurate to call the Neo an iPhone 16 Pro motherboard slapped in a MacBook Air chassis, because even though on some level that's literally what it is, an iPhone motherboard isn't allowed to boot into a PC operating system.
The MacBook Air comparison is also inaccurate because the Neo looks spartan in comparison, but only because the Air is ostentatious. MacRumors published a list of 20 compromises the Neo makes compared to the Air,[8] but I cannot conceive of some of these as issues. For instance, they point out that the MacBook Neo uses an older modem that lacks Wi-Fi 7 capabilities and only supports Wi-Fi 6E. And that's literally true! But in ideal conditions, Wi-Fi 6E ought to exceed a gigabyte per second of throughput, and that's comparable to the maximum throughput of both the Neo's NVMe storage and single USB 3.1 port. What's the point of Wi-Fi 7?
The list goes on like this. The included 20 W power supply and limited charging speed are criticized, but 20 W is enough to charge the battery in under two hours or run the system indefinitely with the screen brightness at max and CPU and GPU running full-throttle. The keyboard isn't backlit as if it isn't frontlit by the glow of the screen. The trackpad is mechanical rather than haptic, so it feels like the old MacBook I'm used to. It only has two microphones as if I need more than one. The webcam doesn't have enough megapixels to show every one of my pores in my Zoom calls. The battery is so unusably small that the TSA lets me take it on a plane. It's thicker than the MacBook Air, making it less portable than a Sager.
The Neo's relative simplicity is a selling point. One reason to consider one over a used M1 MacBook Pro is because the Neo doesn't have a Touch Bar. There's no notch because the camera sits above the screen in a bezel, because it actually is ok to have bezels. They're fine! They're smaller than the ones on my old MacBook Pro anyway. The lack of a notch preempts the weird UI bugs and frustrations that can emerge. The Air has more features but what do more features even do? I do miss MagSafe for charging already—my Surface also has a MagSafe-esque charger—but if omitting it keeps the cost of the system down, so be it. And if it's for market segmentation, well, I can't say I think it's worth $500.
Complimenting its simplicity is its serviceability; iFixit has dubbed the Neo the most repairable MacBook in 14 years.[9] This is actually what sold me on the Neo: it's not a disposable black box. I'm glad that Apple finally decided to make a new laptop that can be repaired without cryptographically-paired parts out of the goodness of their h— Hang on, I'm being informed of something called the "ee-you"?
iFixit is probably alluding to the old unibody MacBook Pro that ceased production in 2012, which is a computer I've gutted a couple of times. I think I'd rather wrench on it than the Neo if only because it's roomier and the components look less dense, but judging by teardown pictures and procedures I'll be perfectly content if I need to do surgery on the Neo. Nothing looks more difficult overall, just different.
There's speculation that the Neo's $500 education price is targeting not just high school and college students purchasing their own computers but also school districts purchasing hundreds if not thousands for kids in lieu of Chromebooks. The Neo is repairable in ways that I think support this, and that that's in stark contrast to the other MacBooks supports it further. Did you know that a replacement keyboard for a MacBook Pro costs more than a whole MacBook Neo because you have to buy it pre-riveted to the top case and the top case comes with a battery pre-glued?[10] The unibody MacBook Pro's bottom panel was secured by Philips screws only, but the Neo's is secured by Pentalobe screws and some clips. It's a bit of security-through-obscurity that protects the laptop from everybody except the type of person who knows what a Pentalobe screw is and owns a driver for them. Once inside, though, it's nothing but Torx, and Apple helpfully provides labels indicating compatible driver sizes. Kids will abuse the battery with heavy use and weird charging cycles, but for once there's no glue, only Torx. Kids will spill stuff in the keyboard, but for once there aren't any rivets, only Torx. Kids will jam things in the USB ports, but for once there's no solder, only a plug and—you guessed it!—Torx.[11]
But for every kid who trashes their laptop, there will be another who takes care of theirs, and not just out of fear of repair costs. I would've been that kid. It's why I would have zero interest in the Neo if it were locked down like the Air. The Air wastes Apple's very good build quality on a machine that's ultimately meant to be disposable. If something breaks, you're supposed to take it to an Apple Store and throw it in the recycling bin if repairs are too expensive, and repairs will be expensive because parts are glued and riveted together so broken parts take perfectly fine parts with them. The Neo's build quality is exactly the same and feels no less premium than the Air's, and this combined with the ease of repairs is a genuine selling point because the Neo really is meant to be maintained and even loved far past its useful lifespan. This will be a kid's first computer or the computer that gets them through college. Eventually something will break and it will be silly not to upgrade, but afterwards the old Neo will turn into the backup computer rather than trade-in value.
The Neo may be the ideal laptop—it's the best candidate we've got for a TrabantBook[12]—but "ideal" does not mean "perfect." Post-Jobs Apple cannot make a good user experience to save their lives, but on the other hand have you seen the state of Windows these days? Setting up Tahoe was a pain in the ass in a way that setting up High Sierra wasn't. macOS as usual has default settings that are pretty good for most people and not enough granularity to configure them for the rest. The iPhone integration features are cool in theory but intrusive by default. I don't like it when the boundaries between my desktop, laptop, and phone blur together. I do like iPhone Mirroring, though. The boundary between systems is enforced by the edges of the application window, and I'm used to accessing one of my servers over RDP anyway.
The new Liquid Glass UI adds graphical effects like transparency and animations all over the operating system, and they generally don't look good and make text and graphics less legible. These can be disabled globally but not on a per-program basis; refer back to the lack of granularity. Overall, Liquid Glass feels half-baked, but I can't criticize its performance. At no point has any part of the UI including any graphically-intensive part felt laggy. Did you know that the Neo's GPU has specs that on paper can outperform a PlayStation 4?[13] A phone SoC just has HD games console amounts of GPU performance now. This isn't like Windows Aero back in day struggling to run on the fastest chipset graphics Gateway, Inc. had on offer.
The keyboard sucks. The keys bottom out after 1 whole millimeter, which is not nearly enough travel. Unibody MacBook Pro keys bottom out at 1.4 mm, and those 400 extra microns make it feel so much better. But I hate it less than I expected after putting a few thousand words through it. I'll live. I had half expected to return the Neo to the Apple Store after a couple days suffering with it. On the other hand its trackpad feels just as good as the unibody MacBook Pro's, but it has a new trick: it can be clicked anywhere with equal ease whereas the old trackpad was hinged at the top and much harder to click at that edge.
The Neo has two USB-C ports—one 3.1 and one 2.0 only—on its chassis, but it seems that internally they're connected to a USB hub[14] and the A18 Pro only has a single USB 3.1 controller available. It's a huge downgrade from Thunderbolt, but 10 Gbit/s is a surprising amount of bandwidth and I haven't felt limited by it yet even with a couple of external drives—one solid-state—and monitor connected simultaneously. But why not make both ports USB 3.1…? Is it something to do with how DisplayPort alt mode works? Maybe it would be too obvious if both ports' throughput were cut in half after connecting devices to each? I honestly don't know. It can't be for market segmentation because the Neo's lack of Thunderbolt is unique among all Apple silicon Macs.[15]
Finally, the Neo has one important wear item that isn't serviceable. Its SSD is a flash chip soldered to the motherboard. Ideally, Apple would have used a standard M.2 SSD, but a proprietary flash module like the one in the M4 Mac Mini would also be acceptable. It can be replaced and even upgraded with the magic of BGA soldering,[16] but that's out of reach of most computer dorks like me, let alone the general public.
I opted to blow the extra money on the upgraded Neo with 512 GB of storage because I'm stuck with it for the life of the machine and I'm wary about its durability. Manufacturers tend to rate modern NVMe SSDs at about 600 write cycles, so my Neo ought to be good for about 300 TBWTerabytes written of total writes whereas the base model Neo is only good for 150 TBW. For reference, a friend of mine upgraded his 2012 MacBook Pro with an SSD, and despite ten years of heavy use it only managed to reach 58 TBW, so extrapolating from that suggests that even the base spec Neo should last about 25 years. That's nowhere near even 150 TBW, but it's still a double-digit percentage, so I'm not sure how wary Neo owners should be.
It seems that my fear that this 6 TB/year estimate was underestimating heavier swap file usage was unfounded even though the Neo will be running newer software that eats more memory with half as much available. I have yet to see a single bit get moved to swap with several basic programs open, which means the SSD generally won't be touched at all. 3D Games force macOS to free up RAM, exacerbated by the fact that the 8 GB pool serves as both system memory and VRAM, but nobody will be primarily playing games on a MacBook Neo. So I'm genuinely not sure when to expect the SSD to run out of write cycles, but tentatively it seems like wear and tear from swap usage is flat out not occurring during the things I do 99% of the time. The limited RAM just doesn't seem to be a real issue at the moment, but I still can't assuage the fear that future macOS updates will gnaw at dwindling amounts of free memory.
Nonetheless, the Neo is a fantastic laptop today, and I will use it and love it and care for it while I can, and if the limited RAM is an example of planned obsolescence, so be it. Half the longevity stings less when it costs half as much. If Apple releases a new Neo with an A19 Pro and 12 GB of RAM standard next year, I will not be buying it. The Neo is a laptop that's meant to be used for a long time and replaced only when it can't be used anymore.
"June and I have had a long discussion and I’m proud to announce that we’ve solved how to do computing in a socialist society. first we nationalize AWS and Apple, then we distribute a middle of the road ARM laptop to every citizen, called the TrabantBook."Bluesky. Jun. 24, 2024.
"fantastic macbook neo news: it does not have two usb ports. it has ONE usb port and an internal hub. verified by copying files between two drives attached via usb 2.0 cables:Bluesky. Mar. 24, 2026.
either drive to neo: 40mbytes/s
neo to either drive: 40mb/s
drive to drive on neo: 20mb/s
but!
drive to drive on pc: 40mb/s"
