the big flaw is the price.
same price as a refurb m3 air.
total fail.
screen is like a mirror, half a battery, usb2!?? lol.

"I think a lot of people just hate Apple because... its Apple"

Their current price structure is quite reasonable. You have cheap Neo, better Air and Pro for Pro.

All good... Excluding these tricks with screens and planned obsolescence. They could give matt screens and LCD with 10 or 12 bit (or give software option in Mac  OS for 8 bit). Such important thing and it's totally ignored. And now imagine you have amazing job and only Mac, which is not good for your eyes.

Yes, people are frustrated - from one hand W11, from the other beautiful A/M chips and screen crap.

@GeorgeS

I think a lot of people just hate Apple because... its Apple
8GB... what a horrible thing! It doesnt matter that for majority of users its fine as they only need to run web browser, text processor and spotify.  Sure, its not future proof, will not run local LLMs but its ok even for light gaming. And SoC is far better than numbers says. Not because 'magic' of MacOS which is complete bullshit. Because of raw single-core performance 2-3 generations ahead of x86. It will feel simply a lot snappier for longer period of time even if it will be less useful for 'heavy' workload.  It has only two real downsides:
-no backlit keyboard
-MacOS means need to learn a new how to use computer

Quote from: Bizarro_NikoB on Today at 16:16:42Who is this marketed for? kids/teens, infantilized adults, old people, schools, liberal white women, poor people looking to own an Apple laptop??

I'm being honest, because it seems like a sh*t laptop that is intentionally gimped with massive planned obsolescence baked in. The colorways look childish. The specs (ram, storage, display,ports, etc.) are abysmal for 2026 and I cannot believe Apple is marketing this as something worth buying when there are so many better options at this price point.

I mean, an apple certified-refurbished macbook air would be infinitely better and probably in the same price range!

Comical comments by rather clueless folks.

Forgetting for the moment that the Neo has more cores/threads than the MBP I'm currently using (i5(2C/4T)/8GB/256GB) the Neo costs 1/3 as much as I paid for the MBP.

Forgetting that in the West (or at least in the USA) Professional users get all their IT stuff purchased FOR THEM by the companies they work for (you folks would know this if you ever worked). Surely if a portable WORKSTATION is needed, the more powerful MBP's would be purchased.

So who is the Neo for? First off ANYONE who does NOT want WIN11 and would like a metal chassis & high resolution screen. While tablets & cell phones have mobile apps for just about everything there ARE cases where a desktop/laptop application is not only a better fit but a requirement.

The Neo is far more functional than a iPad and much better build quality than most WIN11 devices at the same price point. In non-professional environments time is NOT money. I regularly have a dozen application windows open including >100tabs in a number of Firefox windows. When the OS and applications in use are not BLOATWARE less resources are needed or required to provide a decent experience.

Of course many of you commenters would know that if you actually owned&used Mac computers.

Who is this marketed for? kids/teens, infantilized adults, old people, schools, liberal white women, poor people looking to own an Apple laptop??

I'm being honest, because it seems like a sh*t laptop that is intentionally gimped with massive planned obsolescence baked in. The colorways look childish. The specs (ram, storage, display,ports, etc.) are abysmal for 2026 and I cannot believe Apple is marketing this as something worth buying when there are so many better options at this price point.

I mean, an apple certified-refurbished macbook air would be infinitely better and probably in the same price range!

Quote from: Think again on Today at 12:42:43A video by Max Tech youtube.com/watch?v=2yXyvQSUSYY ("MacBook Neo vs M5 Air - We were SHOCKED") shows how the Air is outperforming the Neo by 2-3 times, has a dramatically better battery life and 2-4 times faster charging speed. And the video shows how the Neo's display is much more reflective and has a much worse contrast ("The Air's display looks almost like OLED").

The MBA M5 is a much better notebook in every aspects that is totally worth the price difference, who knew?

Once the novelty wears off, you can be sure the same folks who praised it for the wrong reasons will trash-talk it instead (to the classic tune of "they should have told me to get the MBA instead").

A video by Max Tech youtube.com/watch?v=2yXyvQSUSYY ("MacBook Neo vs M5 Air - We were SHOCKED") shows how the Air is outperforming the Neo by 2-3 times, has a dramatically better battery life and 2-4 times faster charging speed. And the video shows how the Neo's display is much more reflective and has a much worse contrast ("The Air's display looks almost like OLED").

Since the charger is rated 20W (9V 2.2A), can you charge this laptop with a common 22.5W power banks? I'd appreciate if you do such test!

Also notebookcheck used to have charging time graph on laptop reviews, what happened?

Great job including a temporal dithering test in the review and making a point about the result!

For us users with sensitive vision, it would be excellent if you could start adding spectrographs of tested screens too; blue light is a big issue for me. Possibly KSF phosphor, on the red end, etc. Cheers for all the PWM plots, too.

Among the first mobile displays with true 10-bit OLED & zero dithering:

youtube.com/watch?v=LarGpve2oSg&pp=0gcJCZoBo7VqN5tD#

Realize this isn't a laptop panel. But I always wondered if it's possible? :)

And apparently it is! Only a matter of time until this display tech moves from phone panels to laptops. It's no longer a case of if, but when.

Ok major disclaimer here as I type/use a 2013 era i5(2C/4T)8GB/256GB 13" Macbook-Pro EVERY DAY!

While MacOS has a larger footprint than OSX before it, MANY folks use Mac's with 8GB of RAM without ANY ISSUES. (I currently have multiple windows of Firefox open (~100 tabs), Brave (~10 tabs), OpenOffice (multiple Writer windows) complimented with a hand full of other utility apps open. ZERO ISSUES.

Please keep in mind that not EVERYONE is doing PRODUCTION or PROFESSIONAL work with THEIR personal computers so have ZERO NEEDS for "portable workstations".

I DO have OEM (Canon) and Adobe software for processing images taken with my DSLR. Drivers for my 3 different Photo printers and 3 different Lazer printers are installed.

I MAY use a SINGLE USB port to move files when no LAN exists. The Neo having only TWO USB ports is NOT a deal breaker and actually none of the other listed items are ether.

The "deal breaker" is that I ALREADY OWN TWO MacBooks so have ZERO NEED/REQUIREMENT for purchasing another one.

The Neo proves that a quality Metal Chassis build & High resolution screen can be had at the ~$600 price point. A cell phone APU with a mere 8GB of RAM can offer a decent laptop experience if coupled with a unbloated OS+Apps.

Some things to correct from this article.

The A18 Pro chip has a 5 core GPU and not a 6 core like iPhone 16 Pro.

And need to mention the Neo includes the 16-core Neural Engine for AI on device tasks.
For the PC side: To qualify as a Copilot+ PC, a device must have a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second.i doubt any of these PCs have that.


Also for comparing the battery life with full brightness the MacBook Neo's brightness is 500 nits compared to the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13 at max 400 nits and the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14 at 300 nits. And that is why it will use more power if set at max.

Keep in mind some PCs like the Surface are almost twice the price at the MacBook Air price territory.

Decent article otherwise.

my dream laptop! love the different colors, cannot wait to buy.

Reviewer:  "...surprisingly good laptop"

...For what??

-workstation? No
-gaming laptop? No
-ultraportable/road warrior? No (4.5 hour battery in bright environments)
-home content consumption? No Tablets are better (OLED) and cheaper
-Office laptop? No plenty of laptops with better keyboards/ergonomics

-eJUNK? Definitely yes!

"I wonder if reducing a panel bit colour depth like from the display settings would end up removing the temporal dithering / FRC also."

Yes, it would, but Apple probably want to more advertise more colors than think about people seeing this problem.