[frankacter]

I’m a bit confused about who this article is really for. The MacBook Neo starts at $600 so when I read:

“MacBook Neo is built on an iPhone chip—the A18 Pro. It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”

and that:

“It’s merely the right kind of performance for anybody who wants to browse the internet or stream video.”

...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.

For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:

https://www.amazon.com/NIAKUN-Computer-Processor-Graphics-Ke...

Or a 15.6" Intel Core i7‑1255U/12650H laptop with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD in a similar price range:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Laptop-High-Performance-i7-1255U-4...

Both of these offer:

* A more traditional laptop CPU

* 2–4× the memory

* 2-4× the storage (1TB vs 256GB base on the Neo)

Standard HDMI/USB‑C video out for external displays

So I can definitely see the appeal of the Neo for people who just want an inexpensive way into macOS, but the claim that “no other budget laptop can compete.” doesn't track.

Maybe it should have been "The least expensive Macbook yet, but that comes with significant downsides."

[theshrike79]

MKBHD said it best: If you're looking at the reviews of the product on tech youtube channels or tech news sites - it's not the laptop for you.

As for your comparisons: 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 and she most likely can't remember to plug it in every night.

Also the first laptop is from a reputable brand called NIAKUN. They must have amazing customer service and unbeatable warranties, right? =) And they certainly will exist in 12 months when you go look for the brand on Amazon and won't be replaced by another random set of letters in all caps selling the exact same product?

The HP is on sale, it's MSRP is $699 and for some weird fucking reason has the numpad on it, making the whole keyboard wonky. Who wants that on a laptop?

And the final thing, as with all price-forward comparisons: build quality. We need an objective standard measurement for chassis and keyboard flex, the ability to open the lid with one finger, the amount of creaking and squeaking said laptop will do in normal use and how hot and loud it gets in your lap when doing light browsing.

[bdbdbdb]

Anyone doing accounts and data entry wants a numpad. My dad recently damaged his laptop keyboard. I gave him a spare usb keyboard, and he still went out and bought a new keyboard just for the numpad. There's a reason pc makers keep stuffing those lopsided monstrosities in there

[theshrike79]

Anyone doing data entry with a numpad will also want a proper one, not a squishy laptop one.

But they're clearly not the majority of the people - the rest of us have to live with a lopsided keyboard because a few people for some reason do data entry on a laptop keyboard.

[commandersaki]

Ah the classic NIAKUN, what we expect from brand name quality: awesome keyboard layout (love a number pad that smashes into the arrow keys), great resolution (1920x1080 so good for 2026!). I'm sure the speakers are state of the art for the form factor, gets amazing battery life (love me max 4-5 hrs on moderate usage), and of course can't forget the plastic body.

I'm sure a similar story can be said about the HP.

If you didn't detect the sarcasm, a laptop is much more than cpu, memory, and storage; it'd be short-sighted to only fixate on this trio. PC laptops compromise on pretty much everything and usually do everything poorly, including CPU (since apple silicon Macs are much better performance per watt).

Then there's the whole aspect of Apple support for both hardware AND software, something no PC vendor can provide.

[glimshe]

I was about to say the same thing. How can people compare Apple to a NIAKUN throwaway laptop? I'm no Mac fanboy - I use Windows, Linux and Mac at home. I find MacOS somewhat annoying, but as a Internet browsing laptop, I'd much rather pay for the Mac Neo than "NIAKUN".

PS: I wrote this on my Macbook Air.

[drcongo]

I wouldn't even let someone connect that thing to my home network, let alone pay money for one.

[TiredOfLife]

Single thread performance on the Neo (important to web browsing) is literally 2-3 times faster than those laptops

[Mawr]

> ...at this price point there are plenty of alternatives for laptops with better performance and specs.

Laughable. Seriously, how long has it been since the M1 Air dropped? And we're still this clueless?

> For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:

Awesome spec dump. Now, what's the real life usage battery life of that laptop like? Oh? Yeah, thought so.

Nobody buys a list of specs, they buy a set of capabilities. And the Neo is capable of supporting normal usage for 12h+ on battery. Go ahead and link me some alternative laptops that can do that, with comparable performance of course — which is on par or better than the original M1 Air mind you.

Killer move by Apple, and I'm shocked there's still so much ignorance around.

[lostmsu]

https://www.staples.com/hp-omnibook-5-16-2k-laptop-copilot-p...

I own one. It lives long enough not to get bothered by charging.

[commandersaki]

Looked up more info on this laptop, my cursory thoughts:

plastic chassis: gross. keyboard with a numberpad: yuck no inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck limited size trackpad, not to mention a PC trackpad: yuck display looks good and is matte: nice fans: gross usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array: yuck supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern

But at least it seems to have comparable battery life to the neo.

[lostmsu]

> plastic chassis: gross.

I don't care, it holds, it is not slippery (a huge problem with my current phone with metal body). What exactly is better with metal?

> keyboard with a numberpad: yuck

I would prefer one without, but that's just a matter of preference here. The layout is good. In fact, it's the keyboard that mostly makes me feel good whenever I use this laptop.

> inverted-T for arrow keys: yuck

In theory I agree, but for some reason that did not feel problematic on this particular keyboard.

> limited size trackpad

?

> not to mention a PC trackpad

To each their own

> fans: gross

Never heard them, not even sure they are there.

> usb-c (charging) port is not the first port in the array

Sounds like a minor issue

> supplied charger brick: yuck, why not something a bit more modern

I prefer "bricks" on the wire to "bricks" on the plug like Apple does because it does not take 10 slots on a power strip.

[NetMageSCW]

Apple’s power adapters take up one slot.

[tim333]

The Windows ones sound good for running games. Wouldn't suit me as I don't game on them and want battery life for reading.

[JSR_FDED]

> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks

The latest reviews are showing that's not really the case

[atoav]

I would ask the opposite. For years now for most of my family even a Raspberry Pi 3B+ 3ould be enough. 95% of people use their machine to run a web browser, that easily ran on hardware that was old 20 years ago.

[frankacter]

Agreed, which is why a $600 price point on a "budget laptop" targeting users running a web browser seems quite over priced.

[atoav]

Well but that's the thing. It is priced like a phone for exactly the kind of person who would spend 600 bucks on a phone. I don't think this is a coincidence.

In terms of performance the raw compute people have in their pockets nowadays surpasses what they typically need by magnitudes for a while now. Granted: programmers and tech companies find new ways of wasting that compute on features that people ultimately do not need, so they may need that the compute so things feel snappy, but if I think about what my parents do on their devices you could easily enable them to do theirs tasks with far less. They are essentially doing the same as ca. 2006 with pictures and videos being higher fidelity & resolution and websites running hundred thousand lines of javascript being the main difference.

[tim333]

The thing with laptops in my experience is a) they last ~6 years (macs at any rate) so that's ~$100/year or 27c a day and b) people spend a lot of time on them, hours a day often. Is it really worth cutting back much on that when it's like 1/10th the cost of getting a cup of coffee?

[slopinthebag]

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. Raw specs are meaningless.

[foldr]

> It’s far less capable of running intensive tasks than any of Apple’s M‑series chips or any moderately powered Intel or AMD processor.”

This is false. The A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1 and slightly better multi core performance. Most people would see no noticeable benefit to a faster CPU. Especially with a fanless design, the additional cores of a comparable M-series chip would give you better burst performance for some workloads, but possibly not much improvement in sustained performance.

[starkparker]

> The A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1 and slightly better multi core performance.

For the first few minutes of sustained use. Then it drops like a rock: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-macbook-neo-re...

> In extended single-core benchmarks, performance drops to the 3.7-to-3.5 GHz range within a minute or so, and they drop to the 2.9-to-3.2 GHz range after about five minutes. Both the M1 Air and the new M5 Air (4.46 GHz) are able to sustain their peak clock speeds indefinitely in single-core mode.

[foldr]

That's a fair point above sustained multicore, but this is probably the right tradeoff for this class of device. Few people are regularly maxing out all of their cores for more than a few minutes at a time, and the people who are doing that probably weren't going to buy Apple's budget $600 MacBook anyway. The increase in single core performance over the M1 is much more valuable to most users.

[starkparker]

That's probably true, although once again it's the sustained _single core_ performance that suffers. Statements like "the A18 Pro has much better single core performance than the M1" without this context still aren't true.

[foldr]

The A18's sustained single core performance is about the same as the M1's and the "burst" performance is quite a bit better. So I'd say it clearly has better single core performance overall.

[adolph]

I wonder if the new displays with A19 processors have better heat dissipation. (and if they can be modified to run full iOS instead of the displayOS variant)

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-apple-studio-displa...

[sockaddr]

Your amazon links are broken. But I think you're missing the point of this thing. This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone, does all the things their school needs them to do in a browser, and doesn't come with a complete dogsh*t OS, and isn't of dubious quality like an HP or a "NIAKUN", whatever that is.

Now the color options, that's a tragedy.

[frankacter]

>Your amazon links are broken.

Thanks. Fixed.

>This isn't for people that really even care about performance. It's for people that want a laptop that works with their iPhone

That was my conclusion to my comment in my original. The title of "no other budget laptop can compete" is not just sensationalized, it is factually wrong. It should have been "the least expensive macbook yet comes with a catch"

[NetMageSCW]

No that title is perfectly correct. You just can’t see past your technical blinders to what compete really means.

[musicale]

> Now the color options, that's a tragedy.

Maybe they need to bring back psychedelic iMacs.

https://www.slashgear.com/1706745/rare-apple-imac-designs-fl...

[saghm]

"No other budget laptop can compete on offering MacOS" is certainly a correct statement, but it's not a particularly interesting one. If they're missing the point, it's because it was exaggerated to the point of not being recognizable.

[x0x0]

And for their kids sick and tired of trying to help them fix Window's incompetence. You're into Dell for at least $800 for anything approaching an actually usable laptop. This is definitely my mom's next laptop.

[apimade]

Total cost of ownership.

I’d give my entire family these ahead of Windows laptops any day.

[hulitu]

> Total cost of ownership.

Mister Gates, is that you ?

[kasabali]

> 15.6"

eww

[brewdad]

The target customer for this wants a laptop that will live in a dedicated space and rarely/never travel, except to the couch. 15 inches is perfect for that.