Apple MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable notebook to date. But does the pursuit of a lower price tag sacrifice too much performance to be useful for musicians and audio engineers on a budget?

At a press conference in August 2007, just before the proliferation of the low‑cost laptops that became known as netbooks, Steve Jobs was asked whether the premium price and design of Macs limited their adoption to a small elite rather than the mass market. He famously replied: “We can’t ship junk!”, explaining there were thresholds Apple couldn’t cross because of who they were. It wasn’t that Macs were more expensive per se — after all, in direct comparisons, Apple’s computers usually compare favourably with the competition — it was just the company didn’t compete at the cheaper end of the business.

However, nearly 20 years later, the circumstances are a little different — especially following the transition to Apple Silicon. With most of the Mac’s logic board components having been reduced to a single silicon package, Apple have arguably never been better positioned to produce a less expensive MacBook. And so, during a three‑day extravaganza of product announcements at the beginning of March, the company decided to introduce just that. Say hello to the MacBook Neo.

Wake Up, Neo!

Not since the unveiling of the MacBook Air 18 years ago has Apple christened a MacBook with a new moniker, which, for a company known for being as meticulous in its branding as it is conservative, isn’t a step undertaken lightly. Just as ‘Air’ was employed to denote a dramatically thin and light design, ‘Neo’ is a nod to the Greek word for new — rather than a reference to The Matrix or a Neapolitan sixth chord — representing something novel for the modern Apple: entry‑level affordability.

The enclosure is usually the first casualty of a budget design, but happily this isn’t the case here — literally. The Neo’s enclosure is made from aluminium and crafted with the same rounded edges and refined finish you’d expect from a MacBook. In fact, the Neo could easily be mistaken for a MacBook Air: the base models of both weigh the same 1.23kg, although the Neo is a whopping 1.4mm thicker!

Perhaps harking back to the playful palette of the early iBook era, the Neo is offered in some vibrant finishes compared with the modern restraint of other MacBooks. Citrus is a striking mix of lemon and lime that leans more towards the latter under studio lighting, making me wish Apple had named it Chartreuse instead. Blush is aptly named for the colour my face would turn if I was spotted with a Neo of this hue in public, whilst Indigo offers a sober alternative. However, as the key caps are colour‑matched to the enclosure, I opted for Silver with its classic white keys.

The keyboard itself is similar to those found on Apple’s other notebooks, though it lacks backlighting and feels slightly spongier than the crisp, precise click of the MacBook Pro. The base model also omits the Touch ID sensor in favour of a standard Lock key, although if Touch ID is a must‑have convenience, a second MacBook Neo model with the sensor is available for an extra £100$100.

For the display, Apple have selected a 13‑inch, LED‑backlit Liquid Retina display with a native resolution of 2408 x 1506 pixels (at 219 pixels per inch) and it looks pretty good, despite lacking some of the premium features that often distinguish MacBook displays. For example, the MacBook Air’s slightly larger 13.6‑inch display is 2560 x 1664 (at 224 ppi) and supports a 25 percent wider DCI‑P3 colour space. However, since music and audio applications aren’t exactly known for their lush and vivid colour schemes, you’re not going to care about this unless you were planning to use a MacBook Neo to colour grade video.

A more noticeable omission is True Tone support. This enables the display’s colour temperature and intensity to match the ambient light of your surroundings, resulting in a warmer, more paper‑like white balance. If I’m being honest, it’s probably a feature that falls into the ‘nice to have’ column and its absence is understandable at this price.

Finally, although both the MacBook Neo and Air feature 500‑nit displays — providing enough brightness to meaningfully support Dolby Vision or HDR10+ content — neither can match the high‑peak dynamic range of the MacBook Pro’s XDR display. This flagship panel is capable of 1000 nits sustained and 1600 nits peak brightness. However, the Neo’s display remains satisfyingly luminescent for day‑to‑day studio work and — aside from lacking the full, cinematic HDR experience — the only time you might truly notice a difference is when working outdoors in direct sunlight, which is admittedly less of a concern in England than in California.

Take The ‘A’ Pill

Unlike other Apple Silicon Macs, which feature M‑series silicon, the Neo is powered by an A‑series chip more commonly associated with the company’s mobile products. And while it might not be immediately obvious why Apple opted to use a chip like the A18 Pro rather than perhaps an older M‑series variant, the choice is quite clever as it means the Neo benefits from Apple’s more recent CPU, GPU and Neural Engine architectures.

When I first tested the iPhone 16 Pro (which introduced the A18 Pro to Apple’s devices in 2024), Geekbench 6 reported single‑ and multi‑core scores of 3244 and 7625 respectively, with a Metal score of 30218. However, testing the A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo reveals slightly better results: 3497 and 8765 for the single and multi‑core scores, and 31336 for Metal. This isn’t particularly surprising, since one would assume the MacBook Neo’s enclosure is more thermally forgiving than the iPhone’s smaller form factor.

Although the multi‑core score is relatively low, it’s worth remembering the A18 Pro is only a six‑core chip, featuring two performance and four efficiency cores (alongside five GPU cores). And if you look at the single‑core result, the A18 Pro actually outperforms some of the high‑end offerings from AMD and Intel, which is why the MacBook Neo feels snappy in general use.

Comparing Apples to Apples, the original M1 had single‑ and multi‑core scores of 2347 and 8342 respectively, while the M5 (tested in the most recent MacBook Air) scores 4195 and 17148. Therefore, even though the A18 Pro only outperforms the M1’s multi‑core limit by around five percent (meaning it will offer slightly more headroom in terms...