Apple has summoned a thunderstorm on the PC industry with the launch of its most affordable laptop ever, making the competition look overpriced. The low price of the MacBook Neo has seemingly caught PC manufacturers by surprise, particularly as it comes from a brand known for fancy and often expensive products.
In fact, the Neo’s low entry price has even prompted a response from Asus co-CEO S.Y. Hsu, who indicated that Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo was a shock that will force the PC industry to respond. “In the past, Apple’s pricing situation has always been high, so for them to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the entire industry,” said S.Y. Hsu (via PCMag).
“In the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product,” S.Y. Hsu stated, despite the fact that Apple has been rumoured to be bringing out a budget laptop based on iPhone silicon for a good few months now. It looks as though the industry wasn’t quite prepared for the price to be that low. S.Y. Hsu also called out the limited amount of memory, describing the Neo as a “content consumption” that’s more like a tablet than a working computer.
That lack of memory hasn’t held back a raft of positive press coverage, though. The Verge said “The Neo is ‘it just works’ at a lower price”, giving it a 9/10 score, and Engadget referred to it as “the best $599 laptop we’ve ever seen.” Tom’s Hardware saw the writing on the wall and called the MacBook Neo “a spectacular budget laptop that should shock the PC industry.”
Other reviews, such as Ars Technica’s, noted that the Neo is “missing a few things that have been standard on MacBook Airs and Pros for a very long time,” while Wired called it “one of the best budget laptops you can buy right now—despite its flaws,” giving it a 7/10 score. The consensus seems to be that, despite some obvious shortcomings, as Tom’s Guide puts it: “The MacBook Neo redefines the value laptop at $599.” That sentiment is shared by Bloomberg, which called it a “game changer for the laptop industry.”
The MacBook Neo is designed to be a daily school or work device, with Apple boasting about great battery life, an easy-to-carry size, and enough performance for regular tasks. Whether you need a laptop for answering emails, taking video calls, browsing the web, sharing/editing photos, or building spreadsheets, the MacBook Neo looks as though it has the muscle to get the job done. And that’s while operating on battery for up to 16 hours.
Understandably, to achieve its £599 ($499 for students) price tag, Apple had to cut some corners. Surprisingly, the MacBook Neo didn’t cheap out on the main parts. The frame is made of aluminium, the screen has a 13in LED-backlit IPS panel boasting a sharp 2408×1506 resolution (219PPI) and 500nits of brightness, the FaceTime HD camera is 1080p, plus there’s even a Touch ID fingerprint reader on the £699 version. All of that goes into a slim 29.75 x 20.64 x 1.27cm chassis, available in Silver, Blush, Citrus and Indigo colour options.
The parts that took the brunt of the cost cuts are internal. This time, there’s no M-series chip; the MacBook Neo makes do with Apple’s A18 Pro chip, the same found inside the iPhone 16 Pro. This chip features six CPU cores (two performance plus four efficient cores), a slightly cut-down GPU with five cores (instead of six on the iPhone), plus 8GB of unified memory. Unfortunately, that memory isn’t upgradable, even by Apple, due to the way it interfaces with the CPU. As for storage, you can choose between a 256GB or a 512GB SSD.
That said, don’t let these specs scare you. Unless you plan on running some heavy tasks, the A18 Pro chip should be more than capable of handling any browsing or emailing you need for your work or school. It might not be happy about you opening loads of Chrome tabs while you work on Photoshop, but it will be fine for general work.
Needless to say, Asus, Lenovo, Microsoft, and the others are in a tough spot right now, because if Apple, the company that sells a separate monitor stand for $999, can produce a budget laptop for $599 in the middle of a memory shortage, what’s the competition’s excuse? Apple is now a threat that they can no longer ignore.
