MacBook Neo Review: Can Apple's Cheapest Laptop Handle Real Work?

[Soccerrick10]

I bought a 512GB Neo about a week again. My configuration is a Mac mini M4 Pro that is used for running my photography business. I have an iPad Pro for editing photos with the Apple Pencil, Studio Display and Lightning port extended keyboard and trackpad. I hate having those two items as my only Lightning devices.

Since I use Universal Control with the iPad, I bought the Neo to see if I could use it as a replacement for the keyboard and trackpad, eliminating the lightning charging. It works GREAT!. I had no issues and for that use, it was transparent compared to the other hardware.

The battery life improved greatly over the course of the week as I tried it for the non-business uses. The screen was workable for displaying mail and messages while working on the Studio Display. All in al, it was a very pleasant experience. I did ended up returning it because it worked so well and only came up short in a couple of areas that the MacBook M5 Air will resolve (backlit keyboard, nicer screen and trackpad, P3 color) AND it runs some programs that the Neo will not (at least not yet since they were written for the M series. When I tried to run them on the Neo, they came up as incorrect processor)

So, all in all, I highly recommend the Neo. It was eye opening simple. It demonstrated to me it is headed in the right direction and challenged me to move forward with an even better tuned system for my needs.

 

[mystery hill]

I'm actually kind of annoyed because I wanted a clear reason to keep my Pro.

What made you choose the Pro over the Air?

 

[Piggie]

After watching a few video's about how amazing this laptop could be with a little more thought to how to could the CPU be cooler to stop it thermal throttling.
And having games run at twice the speed with some simples improvements.
Apple's engineers should be ashamed of themselves of creating a machine that has the ability to be so much better than it is, but is crippled due to poor design to thermal throttle so much due to over heating that it's performance is artificially ruined due to their inability to design a case that pulls away the heat.
This could be an amazing machine. Apple should be Ashamed At how their design from their hardware tram has spoilt it's full potential.

 

[StuBeck]

Why we talk about the Neo so much? We know that the m1 can do that so the Neo can too… duh nothing new here !

Exactly, and the 8 GB of RAM zealots didn't just disappear. We know what it can do, and that yes, even though it has less ram than an Apple monitor, it still has enough to do work.

After watching a few video's about how amazing this laptop could be with a little more thought to how to could the CPU be cooler to stop it thermal throttling.
And having games run at twice the speed with some simples improvements.
Apple's engineers should be ashamed of themselves of creating a machine that has the ability to be so much better than it is, but is crippled due to poor design to thermal throttle so much due to over heating that it's performance is artificially ruined due to their inability to design a case that pulls away the heat.
This could be an amazing machine. Apple should be Ashamed At how their design from their hardware tram has spoilt it's full potential.

This was all intentional, its something they and the rest of the industry do to make sure that you want the more expensive machine that doesn't cost them that much more to make.

 

[Purrific]

I should've added that when I was doing my work today, I was accidentally in Low Power mode! So I am super-impressed.

 

[Corefile]

But for the basic person who wants a cheap laptop to run Windows then it won't suffice as running Parallels in 8GB is not really recommended due to the Win11 footprint.

 

[capamac]

Because it's currently turning the industry upside down. Apple has traditionally been a "luxury" to most people, so by bringing the prices down to this level almost anyone can get one and get into macOS.

Yes, but ... https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-pre...14s-16s-laptops-with-core-3-wildcat-lake-cpus

MSI presents Apple Macbook Neo competitor: Modern 14S/16S laptops with Core 3 “Wildcat Lake” CPUs

PC competition already here. Or will be soon.

 

[randywsandberg]

Why we talk about the Neo so much? We know that the m1 can do that so the Neo can too… duh nothing new here !

Because, like he said in the video, it's kind of shocking that Apple came out with such a nice computer that will appeal to many folks for such a low price.

 

[jz0309]

After watching a few video's about how amazing this laptop could be with a little more thought to how to could the CPU be cooler to stop it thermal throttling.
And having games run at twice the speed with some simples improvements.
Apple's engineers should be ashamed of themselves of creating a machine that has the ability to be so much better than it is, but is crippled due to poor design to thermal throttle so much due to over heating that it's performance is artificially ruined due to their inability to design a case that pulls away the heat.
This could be an amazing machine. Apple should be Ashamed At how their design from their hardware tram has spoilt it's full potential.

If you need @better thermal throttling", then get the right tool for the job.

 

[capamac]

8GB RAM makes sense given how the LLM slop companies are buying most of the available RAM these days.

 

[Corefile]

So that's considered "real work"???
I don't know who can mange 30 or even 69 tabs on a 13" screen, I sure can't.

You can't be using Vivaldi then.

 

[randywsandberg]

So that's considered "real work"???
I don't know who can mange 30 or even 69 tabs on a 13" screen, I sure can't.

But anyways, very happy with my base model Neo, have done some light work in LRC/PS with no issues

Congrats on the Neo purchase. How are you liking it?

 

[Corefile]

I rarely have more than three tabs open before I get annoyed.

Vivaldi auto-hide feature will change your life.

 

[Corefile]

After watching a few video's about how amazing this laptop could be with a little more thought to how to could the CPU be cooler to stop it thermal throttling.
And having games run at twice the speed with some simples improvements.

Any grandma can easily buy some thermal paste or thermal pads to do the like. I know my grandma kept a pentalobe set in her knitting tin.

 

[jz0309]

You can't be using Vivaldi then.

No and I have no intentions too, I'm doing just fine with maybe 5-8 tabs open, don't need more than that

 

[Purrific]

What made you choose the Pro over the Air?

At the time when I got my Pro, the Air was still the M1 and I didn't love the chassis, and I knew it had only 8GB RAM (HA!). When the M2's came out, I regretted not getting the Air, so I tried it, but for some reason the screen did not agree with me - it made me feel nauseous. I am one of those people who is very sensitive to certain screens... When they released the 15" Air, I tried again, with the same result! I really wanted it to work for me, but I could not live with the screen. Weirdly, I find the Neo screen to be perfect, even though I know it is objectively worse than both the Pro and Air screens!

I was also upgrading from an early 2015 MBP, so I liked that line. (Straight after I bought that, Apple released the dinky MacBook! So I was kicking myself, but it would not have been enough for running my translation software in Parallels - need a powerful-ish computer for that, and a large enough screen to see the LHS text in the source language and the RHS text in the target language).

 

[jz0309]

Congrats on the Neo purchase. How are you liking it?

I like it better than the M2 iPad Air it replaced, does everything I need it to

 

[Purrific]

But for the basic person who wants a cheap laptop to run Windows then it won't suffice as running Parallels in 8GB is not really recommended due to the Win11 footprint.

Running Parallels 26 actually works perfectly - it's weird. No lag, nothing. Of course, I am using it for database type work, and NOT AAA gaming. 😀

 

[randywsandberg]

Yes, but ... https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-pre...14s-16s-laptops-with-core-3-wildcat-lake-cpus

MSI presents Apple Macbook Neo competitor: Modern 14S/16S laptops with Core 3 “Wildcat Lake” CPUs

PC competition already here. Or will be soon.

And yet, at the end of the day, MSI and all other PC manufacturers products/processors -- regardless of performance or price -- don't run macOS which is why being at to get a Mac at such an affordable price is such a big deal. 🙂

 

[Genelec8341]

No Thunderbolt, no cookie.

 

[randywsandberg]

Running Parallels 26 actually works perfectly - it's weird. No lag, nothing. Of course, I am using it for database type work, and NOT AAA gaming. 😀

Indeed. My "old" M1 Mac mini with 8GB memory and a 256GB SSD could easily run Parallels and Windows 11 all day long without ever breaking a sweat.

 

[Duncan-UK]

No Thunderbolt, no cookie.

Buy an Air then. If you need/can afford TB devices, you can afford an Air.

 

[capamac]

Yeah but macos is at a low point rn.

A friend on the Neo:

"still extremely interested to see how this mac neo plays out. my own thesis is that it'll have some, but relatively muted, impact on the pc space, outside of people buying neos for their kids instead of ipads ... "

"... the usual mix of 'i'm a lifelong windows user. i'm never going back after trying the mac neo' and 'i tried the mac neo for a month, here's why i went back to windows'"

 

[ikramerica]

Because it's currently turning the industry upside down. Apple has traditionally been a "luxury" to most people, so by bringing the prices down to this level almost anyone can get one and get into macOS.

Plus, according to the commercial I saw, it is colorful and you can slap stickers on it if you want. Who would need more than that?

 

[Fallforward]

Macs use RAM more efficiently : thats an utterly FASLE statement and you don't know what you are talking about, please fix it.
Data and instructions take what they take to store. A byte is 8 bits, a unicode char is 1-4 bytes and there is no getting around that. In fact pixels are often stored as float16 in macOS API's in RGBa format or 16bits (2 bytes) per channel X 4 channels = 16bytes / pixel. exactly the same on PC or Linux. Why ? because GPU math is more accurate when processing images and is pretty much just as fast as lower formats unless you want 8bit which can be pretty ugly on real images but ok for some games.
What macOS does do is hide its virtual memory usage more because its SSD's are now really fast, but I can assure you when an app that needs to do realtime work hits VM, its performance crashes. using VM works to keep low speed apps running, but its not a substitute for real RAM and the performance it provides.

Macs use RAM more efficiently is utterly true. Learn more about how apple A and M chips use the various components (processors, GPUs, Neural Engines, etc) along with a large amount of cache on multple levels connected with high bandwidth channels in the Unified Memory Architecture, alltoghther greatly reduce the RAM workload, i.e., "uses RAM more efficiently." Also, Apple has RAM in the chip packages. Simple proximity makes it faster and more efficient.

Also, Apple can optimize its operating systems down to the the lowest chip level components (firmware, microcode, kernal extensions and drivers) that help to optimize use of RAM while other operating systems cannot do that because they (such as windows) need to operate on multiple chip designs they do not control.