After a week of product announcements—starting with the iPhone 17e, a refreshed iPad Air, and souped-up MacBook Pro models—Apple has unveiled a new category in its laptop lineup for the first time in a while: the “MacBook Neo.”
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Positioned below the MacBook Air as an entry-level machine, this new MacBook is the most affordable laptop the company has ever made, with a starting price of $599. While it’s been possible to buy a new MacBook Air at lower prices—like the 2020 M1 MacBook Air Apple sold for several years for $699 exclusively through Walmart—this is officially the cheapest MacBook out the gate.
Aside from the price, its approach to color also makes it unique among the other MacBooks in Apple’s lineup. You have several bold color options, including Silver, Indigo, Blush, and Citrus. The colors harken back to the iBook G3 of yesteryear and are akin to the current iMac design. While there are several color options for the MacBook Air, they are much more subtle.
Despite its price, Apple isn’t appearing to cut corners on the screen. With a resolution of 2408 by 1506 and up to 500 nits of brightness, Apple boasts that it is “both brighter and higher in resolution than most PC laptops in this price range.” There’s a 1080p camera, two USB-C ports, a Touch ID sensor, side-firing speakers with Dolby Atmos, and a headphone jack.
The MacBook Neo makes some concessions to hit its aggressive price though. It’s powered by the A18 Pro chip—the same processor inside the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. Yup—you read that right. iPads have used Mac chips for years, but now a MacBook is using an iPhone chip. Still, this processor should deliver more power than the original M1 chip in the MacBook Air. Apple claims the chip gives the MacBook Neo up to 16 hours of battery life. That’s less than MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.
The use of the iPhone chip means this MacBook also means that it only supports one external monitor. While Apple doesn’t include it in the main body of its press release, in the notes at the bottom, it’s specified that testing was done on a configuration with 8 GB of unified memory and 256 GB of storage.
Photograph: Courtesy of Apple
Photograph: Courtesy of Apple
