When I used Apple’s MacBook Neo, this is what surprised me the most
When I got hands on with Apple's MacBook Neo budget laptop at the London leg of the company's Apple Event several things jumped out at me
When I got hands on with Apple’s MacBook Neo budget laptop at the London leg of the company’s Apple Event several things jumped out at me.
The first thing is how premium it feels – it has the same aluminium finish that you’d expect from a MacBook Air and many would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a silver Neo and the silver MacBook Air.
The second is that the trackpad is very different. That’s because it’s mechanical rather than haptic. If you’ve used any recent Mac laptop you’ll be able to tell the difference.
That’s because the trackpad on the MacBook Air and Pro don’t actually click – they use haptic feedback to give you the impression that a click has been made. Yes – a simulation of a click. Not so with the Neo – it actually moves. Unlike on early Mac laptops with dedicated buttons, you can click anywhere on the pad, just as you can with the haptic pads.
What I also found was that all the apps worked very snappily despite the meagre 8GB of memory and the A18 Pro iPhone chip taken straight from the iPhone 16 Pro – 2024’s flagship iPhone, lest we forget. I later found out that the chip used in the Neo is slightly different, because it only has five core graphics instead of the six cores slated for the iPhone 16 Pro.
The 8GB of memory could be a restriction when it comes to running more complex apps and indeed, Apple previously defended its use of 8GB inside the MacBook Air M2 and M3 before finally relenting and supplying 16GB as a minimum in late 2024.
The 13in 2408×1506 LED display (219ppi with up to 500 nits brightness) is very bright for a budget laptop. I wasn’t so keen on the audio quality from the side-firing dual speakers, but we’ll see what it’s like when it comes to our review.
It did surprise me that the two USB ports are different. That fact wasn’t hidden, but it does feel like it will be a little annoying for some users even though you can charge from both ports. What I don’t know is whether that’s a restriction to do with the hardware used or a cost-saving measure.
It was a pleasant surprise that the new Mac comes in a variety of colors – indigo, silver and citrus. The fact silver is retained shows that Apple thinks it is probably going to be the most popular color.
Remember there are two models and the 256GB version doesn’t have Touch ID which is a shame. But $100/£100 more will get you Touch ID and 512GB of memory instead. And $699/£699 is still a good price considering that’s what many were expecting the Neo to cost anyway.
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Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
