Apple MacBook Neo first-look: The £599 MacBook for almost everyone

There’s an iPhone in every other pocket in the world. Can Apple put a MacBook in every other home on the planet — or at the very least, in every classroom? That seems to be the aim of the brand new MacBook Neo, Apple’s new portable computer that swaps out a traditional computing chipset for a mobile chip instead.

It’s cheap, it’s colourfully cheerful and, at least at first early glance, up to the majority of tasks most people spend most of their time doing on their computers everyday. “My first Mac”, but without the compromises that would usually imply.

MacBook Neo: In Short…

• A MacBook powered by an iPhone chipset, the A18 Pro
• Runs macOS Tahoe and iOS apps side by side
• Starts at £599, with student pricing at £499
• 8GB of RAM across all models, with 256GB or 512GB of storage
• Touch ID on £699 model
• 13-inch Liquid Retina display
• Colourful aluminium external casing options
• 16 hour battery life at 2408 x 1506 resolution
• 1080p FaceTime camera
• Two USB-C ports and a headphone jack
• A lightweight at 1.22kg

Has Apple made the entry-level of laptops exciting then? We went hands-on with the MacBook Neo at a preview press event at Apple’s Battersea HQ in London to find out — here’s five reasons why it may have done just that.

1. A genuinely affordable Mac

Here’s the first big point — this is a MacBook that is actually, no kidding, affordable. Starting at £599, it’s coming up to close to half the price of the next-most-affordable MacBook, the M5 MacBook Air, which admittedly just got a price bump, with its entry point now at £1,099, no doubt due to the ongoing RAM meltdown the industry faces. Older Air models can be picked up cheaper, but the new MacBook Neo is, by a considerable margin, Apple’s cheapest portable computer.

The £599 unit gets you 256GB of storage, and has a lock button on its keyboard. A step-up model at £699 bumps the storage to 512GB and adds a Touch ID fingerprint scanner to the keyboard for quick unlocks, payments and an added layer of security.

£599 is a great starting point — but it gets even better if you’re a student. Apple’s student pricing scheme gets you in the door here for £499.

Is there a catch? A small one — there’s no charger in the box. But if you’ve got a recent iPhone or iPad, or any other device that charges over USB-C, chances are you’ve already got what you need to refuel the MacBook Neo. If not, you’re going to have to factor a few more notes into that otherwise-great price.

2. Anything a Mac can do…

… an iPhone chip can do just as well? Or at least, almost? That’s the gambit here. Apple’s betting that, for the majority of users the MacBook Neo is aimed at, an A18 Pro chipset will get the job done. This is the same chipset that was found in 2024’s flagship handset, the iPhone 16 Pro — an incredibly capable device even today.

Though both the A-series chips (found in iPhones and some iPads) and M-series chips (found in MacBooks and some high-end iPads) are Apple’s in-house silicon, both ARM-based and similar in core architecture, this is the first time an A-series chip has made its way to a MacBook form factor.

There will undoubtedly be eyebrows raised at whether or not a mobile chip has the juice to fuel a regular computing session — but that’s as much of a question as to what constitutes a regular computing session for the everyman. If you’re mostly browsing the internet, replying to emails, watching videos and tapping away at documents… well, you can do all that on an iPhone very easily, not to mention doing very capable video and audio editing and some pretty beefy gaming these days, too. So putting that power in a MacBook shell, at an affordable price, could be tempting to those put off at Mac’s otherwise higher entry point.

Yes, video editors with multiple ingest streams and high-pressure edits are still going to covet their superpowerful MacBook Pros (which also got an M5 Pro and M5 Max update this week, too). But for those that just need to get a little school work done, pay some bills or share some photos? Maybe even do a little creative work on the side? The Neo will have more than enough in the tank for that.

Indeed, at a demo showcase at Apple’s HQ, we were walked through the full macOS experience on MacBook Neo. We’re talking multiple desktops, dozens of browser tabs, speedy scrolling through a library of hi-res images in an instant, full multi-tasking of popular Mac apps. Which brings us on to…

3. MacBook and iPhone apps living side-by-side

This may be an iPhone chipset, but you’re getting full macOS Tahoe applications here, not just some mobile-only alternative builds. If you’re familiar with Pages, Keynote, Freeform and the usual suite of built-in Apple Mac apps, they’re all present here, as well as third-party favourites like Photoshop, Slack, or whatever else you use every day. The underlying similarity between Apple’s A-series and M-series chips mean nothing gets left behind.

And, if you’re coming to Mac for the first time as an iPhone user, all your favourite iPhone apps are here now too. Apple’s excellent Continuity feature, which lets Apple devices interact and piggy-back off each other, means your iPhone can easily pair with the MacBook Neo and put your iPhone apps side-by-side in the same library as your Mac apps, ready to be run right next to your Mac apps. The same goes for iCloud-based Photos and Notes, synced between devices, and also clipboard entries too — copy something on your iPhone, and it’s available to paste on your MacBook Neo. Sure, there’s nothing new here — all this works on a MacBook Air, or Pro, or desktop Mac Mini or Mac Studio — but getting this feature set and convenience at this price point feels very attractive.

Where things are going to get interesting is with more demanding applications. MacBooks are beloved by the creative industries for their processing power, be that for 3D rendering, ultra-resolution video editing, and near-infinite audio stem recordings. Apple’s demo pushed the Neo far beyond what you’d expect the limitations of an iPhone chip would be, but demanding Mac users will be keen to stress-test the Neo with 3D rendering with Blender or a stacked Final Cut Pro video editing project.

4. AI-ready — and onboard

Apple’s AI, or Apple Intelligence as the company calls it, is cooked into all of Apple’s latest products, and the MacBook Neo is no exception. Just like the iPhone 16 Pro that the A18 Pro chip debuted in, the MacBook Neo can access on-device Apple Intelligence features, as well as tapping into the additional ChatGPT artificial intelligence features.

At a basic level, Apple Intelligence can help you clean up hastily-written text, generate images from prompts, and help with quick image editing tasks like removing a background — or an unwanted photobomber — from a scene. That’s the tip of the iceberg, and Apple Intelligence is getting new features all the time.

5. The most colourful Macs ever — and with better-than-you’d-guess specs

The MacBook Neo comes in four very attractive colours. As well as the staple MacBook Silver, you’ve got a soft pink, a blue-gray indigo, and what I’m calling the ‘Brat Mac’ citrus green. The attention to detail is careful throughout — keyboards are colour matched with complementary tones to each case, as are even the speaker grilles (stereo, with spatial audio support, built into each edge) and the underside feet.

Those speakers are surprisingly loud and capable too, giving a good sense of separation when sat in front of it, and, when paired with the 13-inch, 2408 x 1506 resolution display, will be great for a bit of dorm-room movie viewing. It’s bright, sharp and richly coloured, and a fair sight finer than the quality of screen you usually find on a laptop at this price point.

In terms of connectivity it’s no slouch either — Wi-Fi 6E isn’t far off the fastest standard available at the moment, and Bluetooth 6 is bang up to date.

There’s a couple of compromises to the build of the MacBook Neo. There’s no backlit keyboard, and though the trackpad is perfectly responsive to multi-touch gestures, it doesn’t have the haptic feedback other MacBooks offer. Only one of the two USB-C ports onboard is a speedy 3.0 port, with the other being a 2.0 port best suited for attaching low-powered accessories. Battery life is quoted as ‘all day’ — but that’s counted here as 16 hours of general use compared to the M5 MacBook Air’s 18 hours. But they’re all minor stepdowns in the grand scheme of things, at least given the price.

It’s also Apple’s lowest-carbon MacBook, with the Neo using 60 percent recycled content in its construction, more than in any other Apple product to date.

MacBook Neo: Early Verdict

The MacBook Neo might be the most important laptop Apple has launched in years. At £599 (£499 for students), it meaningfully lowers the barrier to macOS, and it does so without feeling like a token “budget” compromise. The headline gamble — running a Mac on the A18 Pro chip first seen in the iPhone 16 Pro — makes more sense than it might initially sound. For browsing, essays, streaming, light creative work and everyday multitasking, there’s clearly enough headroom to run macOS Tahoe.

Yes, power users will still want a MacBook Air or Pro, and there are a few minor corners cut: no backlit keys, mixed-speed USB-C, and a few premium niceties missing. But judged on its audience — students, families, first-time Mac buyers — the Neo feels less like a smart recalibration. If performance holds up under wider testing, this could be the default Mac for almost everyone.

• The affordable iPhone just got a glow-up with the 17e

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