Chinese YouTube channel and repair shop DirectorFeng has showcased the full process of upgrading an Apple MacBook Neo to a 1TB SSD, despite its storage being soldered to the motherboard. The mod quadrupled the budget laptop’s base-level capacity without degrading performance.
Released on March 11, the MacBook Neo debuted with a surprisingly low price, listed at £599 (£499 for students) for the 256GB model and £699 for its 512GB variant. With that, you get a CPU design with two P-cores and four E-cores, topped by 8GB of on-chip memory that can’t be upgraded. Like memory, storage is also non-upgradable, meaning there are no extra M.2 slots to install additional SSDs. However, it turns out you can tinker with the storage system of if you have a bit of modding ingenuity.
DirectorFeng on YouTube shared the complete process for those unafraid of poking their newly acquired laptop with a soldering iron. The video includes all the steps, from opening the machine to removing cables and swapping the NAND chip. Yep, in case this wasn’t already clear, the process requires swapping the original 256GB chip with a higher-capacity 1TB chip – there’s no easy modular upgrade here.
Interestingly, the MacBook automatically recognised the large NAND chip without any firmware flashing or further motherboard modding, at least from what’s visible on the video. This isn’t always the case, as Apple typically doesn’t make these kinds of mods easy. In other words, it was just a matter of installing macOS on the new SSD, as usual, using another functioning Apple device as a source.
Needless to say, doing so automatically voids your warranty. This is why these mods are usually conducted on older hardware that could benefit from a little boost in storage or memory capacity. As for performance, this mod didn’t negatively impact performance. In fact, it seems that it boosted storage speed slightly, reaching nearly 1,600MB/s in both read and writes.
Overall, the process seemed quite straightforward, if you’re a dab hand with a soldering iron and don’t mind getting your hands dirty. The motherboard is only secured by screws, and cables were easy to remove. The usual Apple cleanliness and well-organised internals were also a sight to behold.
