The MacBook Neo is Apple’s first true budget laptop. It launched in March 2026 at $599 and uses the A18 Pro, the chip from the iPhone 16 Pro, in place of an M-series processor. The surprise is how little that shows in daily use. The compromises are real, but most of them sit in places Apple expected its buyers not to look.
Design and build
Pick it up and it feels like any other MacBook. The body is anodised aluminium, it weighs 1.23 kg and it is 12.7 mm thick, a little thicker than the MacBook Air 13 (M5) but almost the same weight. It comes in silver, blush, citrus and indigo, and the colour is part of the metal, not paint.
The trackpad is mechanical. It clicks anywhere on its surface, unlike older mechanical pads that only click near the bottom edge, but it is smaller than the Air’s haptic pad. The keyboard types like a MacBook keyboard, which is a high bar at this price.
What it lacks is a backlight. Notebookcheck called the unlit keyboard the laptop’s single biggest flaw, and it is the one cut most buyers will notice within a week. Touch ID is also missing on the base model; you need the $799 version with 512 GB of storage to get it.
One cut works in the buyer’s favour. Notebookcheck found the Neo easier to open and repair than other MacBooks, with screws in place of adhesive.
Performance
The A18 Pro has six cores: two fast ones and four efficiency cores. In single-core tests it scored 3,589 points in Geekbench 6 and 147 in Cinebench 2024. Those numbers put it ahead of entry-level Snapdragon X Windows laptops for single-core work, which is what makes apps open and web pages load. Multi-core results are lower: 9,140 in Geekbench 6 and 416 in Cinebench 2024, roughly half of what the M5 MacBook Air manages.
In practice, the Neo feels quick for browsing, documents, email, video calls and Apple’s own apps. It slows down when you pile on work. With 8 GB of memory and no larger option, reviewers found it filled up fast once many tabs and heavier apps were open. That is the real limit of this laptop, more than the processor.
The SSD is also slower than the Air’s. Notebookcheck measured about 1,590 MB/s read and 1,540 MB/s write, compared with roughly 2,830 MB/s read on the M4 Air. Fine for everyday use, but large file copies take longer.
The chip uses very little power, between 4 and 6 watts under processor load, so the laptop needs no fan and makes no noise at all. Under full load the top of the case peaked at 40.8 °C, while the palm rest stayed around 30 °C.
Graphics and gaming
The five-core GPU supports hardware ray tracing and is stronger than you might expect from a phone chip, but this is not a gaming laptop. Notebookcheck measured Cyberpunk 2077 at 24 fps on low settings at 1408 x 881, rising to about 33 fps with Apple’s MetalFX upscaling. Baldur’s Gate 3 managed 26 fps at the same resolution. Lighter titles do better: Total War Pharaoh ran at 55 fps at 1080p on low.
Casual games, older titles and Apple Arcade are fine. Anyone who wants to play new releases should look at a gaming laptop such as the Lenovo LOQ 15.
Display
The 13-inch IPS screen has a resolution of 2408 x 1506 and is rated at 500 nits. Notebookcheck measured 519 nits on average and 548 at peak, with 97.9% sRGB coverage and very accurate colours out of the box (DeltaE 1.4). It is sharp and accurate enough for photo editing for the web.
It is a step below the Air’s panel in a few ways. It only covers about 72% of Display P3, it has no True Tone even though it has a brightness sensor, and it reflects more light. Contrast measured 1,142:1. There is no PWM flicker, though the panel uses temporal dithering, which a few people with sensitive eyes may notice.
Battery life
The battery is small: 36.5 Wh, about a third smaller than the Air’s. Thanks to the efficient chip, results at normal brightness are still good. Notebookcheck measured 12 hours 51 minutes of Wi-Fi browsing at 150 nits and 13 hours 38 minutes of video. Tom’s Guide recorded about 13.5 hours of web browsing.
Turn the brightness up and the small battery shows. At full brightness, browsing time fell to 4 hours 49 minutes, and under full load it lasted under 3 hours. Charging is slow as well. With a 65W charger, a full charge took about two hours, and in the UK and EU Apple ships the Neo with only a cable. A 30W charger or larger is the sensible choice.
Ports and connectivity
There are two USB-C ports on the left and a headphone jack on the right. Only one of the USB-C ports is USB 3 (10 Gb/s) with DisplayPort; the other is limited to USB 2 speed, which is slow for external drives. The laptop supports a single external monitor, up to 4K at 60 Hz, and only through the faster port. There is no MagSafe, Thunderbolt, HDMI or SD card slot.
Wireless is Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6. Notebookcheck measured transfer speeds of around 1,100 to 1,300 Mbit/s. The 1080p webcam is fine for calls, and the two speakers are better than most budget laptops, with balanced mids and highs but light bass.
Price and value
The Neo’s original appeal was its $599 price. In June 2026 Apple raised it to $699, and the 512 GB model with Touch ID to $799, citing rising memory costs. The US education price has since gone up twice and is now $649. Retailers including Amazon list it a little below $699.
At $699 it is still the cheapest MacBook and still better built than most Windows laptops at the price. But the gap to the MacBook Air has become more important. The Air lists at $1,299 and has been on sale for under $1,000, and it fixes every major weakness here: twice the memory, a backlit keyboard, MagSafe, Thunderbolt and about three more hours of battery. Our value score uses the $699 list price. The scoring method explains how price affects it.
Who should buy it
Buy the MacBook Neo if you want a Mac for writing, browsing, streaming and study, you mostly use one or two apps at a time, and your budget is firm. It is a better everyday laptop than its price suggests.
Skip it if you type in the dark, keep many heavy apps open, need two external monitors, or plan to keep the laptop for five years or more. In those cases, the extra money for a MacBook Air buys a laptop that will age much better.