The MacBook Neo Is the Best Entry-Level Laptop Right Now. It's Not Close.

Apple just released the cheapest Mac they've ever made, and I think it's the best entry-level laptop on the market right now. Not the best budget laptop with an asterisk. Not "impressive for the price." Just the best.

At $599, the MacBook Neo exists in a space where most laptops are either underpowered or feel cheap the second you open them. Apple created a laptop that threads the needle.

Here's why I'm convinced.

The Chip Situation Is Less Weird Than People Think

Some are making a big deal about the MacBook Neo running an A18 Pro — an iPhone chip — like Apple cheaped out and shipped you a phone in a laptop body. That take is missing something important.

Apple built the M-series architecture directly off their A-series iPhone chips. The M1 — the chip that started the whole Apple Silicon era — was essentially an A14 Bionic scaled up for laptops. More cores, higher memory bandwidth, bigger thermal envelope. It’s Apple’s most recent actual innovation for all the memes about Apple saying “innovation.”

So when people say "the Neo has an iPhone chip," they're not wrong, but they're not telling the whole story either. What they're really saying is that Apple skipped the rebranding step.

The benchmarks make this hard to argue with. The A18 Pro beats the M1 in single-core performance and trades blows in multi-core — and the M1 does have a memory bandwidth edge at 68 GB/s vs 60 GB/s for the A18 Pro, which matters at the margins for heavier workloads. But for the everyday use case this laptop is built for, that gap is basically invisible.

The honest comparison isn't "iPhone chip vs Mac chip." It's closer to M1-level performance in a $599 machine. And the M1 MacBook Air launched at $999.

What $599 Buys You That Windows Can't Touch

Go find a $599 Windows laptop right now. What you're going to get is a plasticky chassis, a mediocre trackpad, a display that makes your eyes hurt after an hour, and Windows 11 doing its thing in the background.

The MacBook Neo at $599 gives you an aluminum build, a 13-inch display at 2408×1506, up to 16 hours of battery life, and one of the best trackpads on any laptop at any price. The build quality alone laps the competition.

And it's fanless. Completely silent. No spinning up, no thermal throttling noise, just a laptop that runs and stays cool.

The Compromises Are Real But Overblown

Look, I'm not going to pretend it's perfect. No keyboard backlight is annoying — that's a legitimate knock at this price. The two USB-C ports are a limitation. The right-side port only runs at USB 2 speeds, which is the kind of thing that feels like a gotcha. No MagSafe either.

And if you're a heavy multitasker running Figma, Slack, a browser with 30 tabs, and Spotify all at once — 8GB will start to feel it.

But here's the thing: those are edge cases for the person this laptop is built for. For students, for people switching from Windows for the first time, for anyone who just needs a reliable, fast, well-built computer — none of those compromises actually matter day to day.

The Real Story Is What Apple Is Doing Here

Apple has never competed at this price point. The entry into Mac has always been a $999 ask minimum. That kept a massive chunk of people stuck in Windows or on Chromebooks indefinitely.

The MacBook Neo changes that math. It's not a watered-down Mac. It's a real Mac, aluminum body, Liquid Retina display, Apple silicon, full macOS. At an actual consumer friendly price.

That's a big deal. And the specs don't even tell the whole story. Once someone is in the Apple ecosystem — iCloud, iPhone sync, AirDrop, iMessage on desktop — the retention rate is basically a lock. Apple knows exactly what they're doing here.

The Bottom Line

If you're shopping for a laptop under $700 and you're not specifically locked into Windows software, the MacBook Neo is the answer.

$599. Buy it.