Neo reviews are in - take with grain of salt of course

[4sallypat]

 

[dmr727]

Ars has their review out too:

Apple MacBook Neo review: Can a Mac get by with an iPhone’s processor inside?

8GB of RAM is a bummer, but this $599 laptop cuts most of the right corners.

arstechnica.com

 

[maflynn]

D2D

 

[4sallypat]

D2D

Love the internal design!

 

[maflynn]

Love the internal design!

He makes a point that the 8GB may feel a bit constraining in the future, and that the MBA's in the refurb store are a better deal, given what you get with the MBA vs. the Neo

 

[4sallypat]

He makes a point that the 8GB may feel a bit constraining in the future, and that the MBA's in the refurb store are a better deal, given what you get with the MBA vs. the Neo

Agree with you, but remember the majority of users are not power nor prosumers.

The 8GB is fine for most regular people - I am one of them - love my 8GB M2 MBA 15" - has been perfect since day 1 for what I use.
3 years running and not a single hiccup with 8GB.

Apple is very smart in marketing this device as it will draw in new customers, education market, and especially those that only have an iPhone only will be their target.

While I love my 8GB MBA, 16GB MBP, 16GB iMac, 32GB Studio Max - this new device will be my answer for a travel laptop (for fun - not work)....

 

[bapegg]

The Neo with 8 GB of RAM would not be enough if I were to run the same things on it that I run on my M4 Mac mini. But I don't plan on trying to run a bunch of stuff at one time or run 3 monitors at once with the Neo.

I almost went into analysis paralysis when comparing the Neo to the MBA. I finally decide that the Neo will be fine for my use case. And that saved me money.

I did the same when upgrading my iPad. I ws using a 2018 iPad Pro and decided to save the money by replacing it with the M3 iPad Air.

If you need more storage and more RAM then it makes sense to go with the MBA.

 

[maflynn]

Agree with you, but remember the majority of users are not power nor prosumers.

The targeted audience is that, I agree. Looking at those people are ordering here at MR - that's definitely not the case.

 

[Fravin]

Did you saw the benchmarks from Geekbench?

A18 Pro chip achieved scores of 3,541 for single-core CPU performance and 8,958 for multi-core. This means the MacBook Neo's peak performance tops Macs with the M1 chip, while the single-core number is approaching the M4 chip, so the MacBook Neo should feel particularly "bursty."​

Here

This is insanely fast for such audience. It seems the Neo is well positioned product.