Apple MacBook Neo

Long-term owners

Millions and millions of normal people have used 8GB M-series Macbooks for the past 5 years, and nobody has those problems you describe.

Mar 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• Apple MacBook ProApple Silicon models stay fast for years, have long battery life, practical ports and enough memory to run local AI models; some dislike macOS and find the 16-inch heavy.928recommend
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Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 1492 comments. Each links to the original.

1. The stress tests with multiple Youtube windows open simultaneously, editing 4K video, and doing heavy duty image editing tasks, in some cases doing stuff like that all at the same time have been very impressive.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

2. it really is a triumph. If the Air is good enough for 99% of the population, the Neo as is approaches good enough for 90% of the population at half the cost.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

3. A while back I went into an Apple Store and opened up as many huge applications (Logic Pro, etc.) and like 50 browser tabs and the Neo still worked fine.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

4. Qualitatively I'm running way more things in the background than I could on Linux and Windows machines with double the RAM, with far fewer hiccups.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo”

5. Its display is better than PC laptops in the same price range, but that display is a non-starter for graphic designers, video editors, etc.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine”

6. The ram is the only thing that I think is a little light, but with the ram situation in the world, asking for 12-16 GB have been too much.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo”

7. Problem with cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks is not performance, but horrific build quality, displays, webcams, audio and keyboards.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

8. Had this existed when they were shopping, I would've just asked what color they wanted it in, ordered it for them, and been done with it.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Review: No Other Budget Laptop Can Compete”

9. they are also showing people that you can have decent Apple performance at a price point previously reserved for budget Windows laptops

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Microsoft Needs Windows Lite”

10. these new MacBook Neo's are converting a whole other wave of users that have that price point as their cap but need something mobile

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

11. Build quality, keyboard and displays are consistently reviewed as being nicer for the Neo than that price range of windows laptops.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra”

12. enormously improved single core performance (which matters more in the real world than sustained load for an entry level notebook)

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo”

13. The Mac Neo is a great product for a large percentage of people out there who wanted to get a Mac that is well made and affordable

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “MacBook Neo and How the iPad Should Be”

14. I must say that the new trackpad is really good. It's not quite as good as the force touch one in my MacBook Pro, but it's close.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

15. The trackpad on the Neo is at the level of a Surface trackpad, which is to say it is worlds better than the typical budget junk

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Business”

16. MacBook Neo is a good balance between a cheap and more than good enough machine that you can carry in your backpack everywhere

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

17. My understanding is this laptop matches or exceeds the M1 Air's performance, so it should be pretty damn nice for most people.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Announces Low-Cost 'MacBook Neo' with A18 Pro Chip”

18. honestly even if you are a developer who works primarily with web dev stuff you will be able to do all of it on this device

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo”

19. I would personally take a MacBook Neo over literally any laptop Acer makes, anywhere in their lineup, any day of the week.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo”

20. it has reasonable ST perf and my guess would be it's competitive with the best x86 chips available today for this workload

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Pentium II at 600Mhz with Voodoo 3 Emulated on 86Box with M6 Mac Mini”

21. It feels like they did everything they could so that the cheap MacBook with an iPhone CPU would not be lighter than the 1.5x more expensive MacBook with Apple Silicon

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo”

22. the two visually identical and unlabeled ports (because labeling is ugly and only for PCs) next to each other are different, and they're stupid for not realizing it

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

23. you'll hit the RAM limit at some point, and you'd almost certainly want to mod it to alleviate the heat issues that kill sustained performance

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

24. My only real issue with this design is as far as I can tell there is no markings on exterior explaining which USB-C port is "the good one"

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo”

25. The Neo is a low end machine that trades RAM, storage, keyboard backlight, I/O and battery capacity for fit and finish and aesthetics.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Business”

26. You can't spin up a VM that has 8GB RAM on the Neo, you can't load a large spreadsheet or do a decently sized digital painting.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Big Data on the Cheapest MacBook”

27. The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account”

28. disappointing they finally got the silicon for the "thin and light at all costs" form factor but gave up on the form factor

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo”

29. Apple could easily have made it 16GB cleaned up the market place and nobody would be talking about Neo being under spec’d.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine”

30. I have no issue with the concept of the product, I just think that a buyer with zero information asymmetry who is fully informed would choose a refurbished or used MacBook Air every time

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “MacBook Neo and How the iPad Should Be”

31. My aunt doesn't need a terabyte of storage or a Ryzen 7 5700U, she needs 15+ hours of battery life because the laptop is going to live next to her spot on the couch

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Review: No Other Budget Laptop Can Compete”

32. They're not the target demographic, I can tell you right now schools and (non-tech) parent's aren't going to buy their kids ebay laptops with linux on them.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “I bought the MacBook Neo and it sucks”

33. I've always found Audio and MIDI processing on a Mac to be a lot more responsive and a lot more resource-efficient on MacOS than any other OS.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

34. Incredible when you consider that the next one or two generations of the macbook neo will probably come w/ 16gb+ ram and support 5k displays.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In”

35. A fun, brightly colored, relatively inexpensive, Windows-less laptop that you can use for doing your taxes while watching a movie has appeal.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account”

36. I would take 8x worse specs for the computer to be built by Apple because it's guaranteed to be 2x faster and a 10x better user experience.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Review: No Other Budget Laptop Can Compete”

37. For a vast majority of Neo owners the lack of ports is a non-issue and for the others that occasionally need the extra ports they're cheap.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble”

38. Alternatively, they could sell the MacBook Neo for $200 in a couple years and buy a next-gen MacBook Neo and they'd still come out ahead.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12”

39. everything from the in-house chipset and scale (for stuff like aluminum body) and the more RAM-efficient software is working in its favor

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

40. Millions and millions of normal people have used 8GB M-series Macbooks for the past 5 years, and nobody has those problems you describe.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Business”