There are much better laptops for less or equal money you can get:

-OLED screen
-more RAM (12gb or 16gb)
-touchscreen with pen support
-convertible
-glass trackpad
-Fanless with 17 hours battery
-same multicore performance
-runs ChromeOS, Linux, and Android apps

for $479 (IPS touch screen):
chromeunboxed.com/the-acer-chromebook-plus-spin-514-just-hit-a-new-all-time-low-price-of-479/

for $649 (OLED touch screen):
chromeunboxed.com/yes-the-lenovo-chromebook-14-is-the-best-chromebook-ive-ever-used/

Both laptops are better in every respect than the MacBook Neo.

"This using a very similar display to MBA's. Has there ever been a MBA in history that suffered from  pwm or problematic temporal dithering?"

PWM - M1 Air
Temporal dithering - all M Air so far

If you're not affected, you're lucky.