A few notes about the MacBook Neo

The yeahs

It is a well-built machine. Hardware manufacturing is still one of Apple’s few strong suits left.

The colours! Citrus is my favourite, Indigo a close second. When seen in person, they both live up to the expectations after you’ve seen the photos.

The A18 Pro chip delivers very good performance overall.

I don’t care if the Neo lacks an ambient light sensor or if the webcam isn’t cutting-edge — It does not feature a notch on the top of the display and this is so huge for me. I thought Apple forgot that displays are supposed to be plain, uninterrupted, unblemished rectangles. Design-wise, this is currently the only Apple laptop I can look at and can think of purchasing after the 2020 M1 MacBook Air.

The introductory video is fun and reminded me of all the whimsy Apple forgot about in all their efforts to convince us that they only make serious, premium machines produced in a greyscale vacuum.

The okays

The trackpad is fine. Well-built and ‑engineered for being a regular, old-school trackpad without haptic engine.

8 GB of RAM are fine. If you want more it’s because you need more. If you need more, get a MacBook Air or Pro. For consumer and prosumer use it’s enough RAM. I have my 2013 11-inch MacBook Air in my other studio. It has 4 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD for internal storage. It has a 1.3 GHz Core i5 Intel processor (boosts to 2.6 GHz). It currently has 7 open apps — Vivaldi (with 7 tabs), Mail, Safari (with 4 tabs), Reeder, Acorn, nvALT, and Skim, and it runs smoothly. I’m still running Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra, and not Mac OS 11 Big Sur, which is the last version of Mac OS supported by this MacBook Air. High Sierra feels less resource-hungry than Big Sur.

The pricing. I’ve put it in the ‘okay’ and not in the ‘yeah’ category because, while the original pricing in USD makes it feel like a very affordable machine (especially with the education discount), those $599 and $699 in my country become €699 and €799 respectively. It’s still the cheapest Apple laptop, relatively speaking, but the gap between €799 and the €1,199 of a base 13.6‑inch M5 MacBook Air doesn’t feel that wide, especially considering just how much you gain by choosing the Air, including a higher degree of future-proofing. These machines aren’t upgradable, but the Air with 16 GB of RAM and an M5 chip is certainly a machine that will last you longer especially if it seems too overkill for your initial needs; you’ll probably touch the Neo’s ceiling much sooner. If you don’t even need a laptop, the €719 base M4 Mac mini is a better deal than a €699/€799 MacBook Neo.

The mehs

In my opinion, a worse offender than the 8 GB of RAM is the base 256 GB of storage. Cry “RAM shortage” all you want, but if 256 GB are more than enough in a current smartphone, they’re definitely too tight for a computer. Storage tiers closer to 2026 needs would have been 512 GB/1 TB.

I’m not thrilled by the lack of backlighting in the keyboard. Maybe it’ll appear in the pricier model in a future iteration. The keys are white/tinted, so maybe the printing is contrasty enough to make the key symbols visible even in poor light. I was willing to put this in the ‘okay’ category, but I can’t help feeling this was an unnecessary corner for Apple to cut.

Mac OS 26 Tahoe. I love how, now that the MacBook Neo is here, suddenly a lot of people seem just fine with Mac OS 26. “Well, what can we do? It comes preinstalled,” you’ll retort. Okay, but if you’re doing a review of the Neo and you don’t like the current iteration of Mac OS and its dreadful ‘Liquid Glass’ UI, you could at least say that. Not just turn a blind eye to Tahoe and act as if everything’s fine because the MacBook Neo is cool hardware. I’m especially talking about people who used to criticise Liquid Glass before the MacBook Neo came out. Well, for me it’s still a glaring issue, and while I’d instantly purchase the Neo just for the lack of a notch in its display, the Neo coming with Mac OS 26 preinstalled is the real deal-breaker for me. There are moments when I feel as if the MacBook Neo is Apple’s hardware distraction and eye-candy to make people forget about the Mac’s worsened software quality. And too many reviewers seem to have happily taken the bait.