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Why I Returned the MacBook Neo

bzgnyc2 said:
I agree except I would put the needs for many business and especially econ programs in the STEM category due to the way they have evolved over the years. Some of them are basically full applied data science programs.

In general Neo seems like a great first computer for "casual users". If you already have a computer, it's probably not going to feel like an upgrade unless it's an old MacBook 11". If you already have a Pro, I hope it feels like a downgrade as otherwise your Pro sounds not very Pro.
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You are probably right about certain Business and Econ programs. It varies. Programs in Business Analytics and Quantitative Econ would probably require more horse power.
 
Pbwallstreet said:
I challenge you to PRESS on the screen of an iPhone 17 Pro or a new MacBook Pro or even a new MacBook Air. There's almost no blooming at all.

A laminated display has the screen layer bonded directly to the front glass with a transparent adhesive, so the whole assembly behaves more like a single solid piece and pressing on it usually causes little to no visible rippling or “blooming.” A non-laminated display, by contrast, has a small air gap between the cover glass and the actual display panel, so when you press on the surface the outer layer can flex more independently and onto the pixels beneath it, making pressure distortion aka "blooming" more noticeable. The key technology difference is that lamination physically removes that gap and optically couples the layers in a uniform piece, which improves rigidity, reduces parallax and internal reflections, and generally makes the screen stable under touch or pressure.
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Again I've yet to see confirmation of this.

Having used iPads and iPad Airs in the past it is the laminated iPad Air which when you press the display blooms, the iPad however with its air gap does not.

As I've said even the slightest touch of the Neos screen will produce blooming indicating the outer layer and screen as connected, aka laminated.
 
tomtad said:
Again I've yet to see confirmation of this.

Having used iPads and iPad Airs in the past it is the laminated iPad Air which when you press the display blooms, the iPad however with its air gap does not.

As I've said even the slightest touch of the Neos screen will produce blooming indicating the outer layer and screen as connected, aka laminated.
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Show a video of it. I have pressed on my iPhone 17 Pro screen, my M3 15" MacBook Air screen, my M series 16" MacBook Pro screen, there is is almost no blooming.
 
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tomtad said:
Again I've yet to see confirmation of this.

Having used iPads and iPad Airs in the past it is the laminated iPad Air which when you press the display blooms, the iPad however with its air gap does not.

As I've said even the slightest touch of the Neos screen will produce blooming indicating the outer layer and screen as connected, aka laminated.
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Man goes into a doctors office and says: Dr. it hurts when I do this. Dr. Replies:”dont do it”.

If you see blooming when pressing in the neos screen, don’t do it.

For the price point the Neo is fantastic.
 
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maflynn said:
I'm not surprised and in all honesty, there's a level of choice-supportive bias. That is people are defending their purchase of the neo as superior and if someone challenges it they have an emotional response. We all do it and I'm just as guilty
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Nope. I get the impression most people on this thread don’t own one. I don’t either. But I went to the store to see it, and I think the OP has something with his eyes that is creating a parallax or color shift. Because he is seeing what nobody else is seeing.
 
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maflynn said:
I'm not surprised and in all honesty, there's a level of choice-supportive bias. That is people are defending their purchase of the neo as superior and if someone challenges it they have an emotional response. We all do it and I'm just as guilty
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I don’t understand; superior to what? I know my new Neo isn’t superior to the air or the Mac M5.

It is though, right sized for my usage.
 
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ikramerica said:
Nope. I get the impression most people on this thread don’t own one. I don’t either. But I went to the store to see it, and I think the OP has something with his eyes that is creating a parallax or color shift. Because he is seeing what nobody else is seeing.
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But we're holding it wrong! Right back at you: I get the impression there is something wrong with your eyes to not see an inferior screen.

I posted this and will provide it here - the Neo screen:

  • It does not support P3, but rather, it's just a sRGB panel. That means it is unable to show a larger array of colours: ~30% less colour spectrum compared to a MBA for instance.
  • No white balance adjustment.
  • 60 Hz refresh rate.
  • Lower contrast.
  • Lower anti-reflectivity coating.
  • Importantly, and most significantly, the Neo screen is not laminated. That means there is an air gap between the outer glass and the underlying LCD, which is the reason I saw distortions. Delaminated screens are like taking a piece of glass and hovering it above a page of a book in a lit room: it can create distortions of the content, particularly if viewed from slight angles and the air gap traps light, slightly washing out the screen.
Overall, this adds up to why this Max Tech guy says, as he compares the Neo to a MacBook Air screen:

"It's a big difference. Honestly this [the Neo] makes the Air screen look like an OLED. We did not EXPECT this big of a difference"​

 
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I am on the fence to get a Neo.

It hits quite a lot of checkmarks for me.

1: small and compact for traveling and in my backpack (riding bike a lot)
2: I just need it for my language study, administrative tasks.
3: I do not play games, i do not edit videos, so i do not need a very powerful device.

Entertainment needs
1: streaming the occasional movie, watching some youtube, browsing the net (i dont have socialmedia)

I have a ipad mini 6 that is now 6 years old, it still works fine for my basic tasks, i just do not like the constraints of IOS as a desktop replacer, it`s just annoying to shoehorn it into something more then a tablet.

I have a HP work laptop with a broken spacebar, it works fine, but having a personal device would be nicer.

I suspect the refresh cycle of the Neo is not yearly but once every 2/3 years instead.
 
Pbwallstreet said:
The Neo’s screen made me feel like I was stepping back in time. I can’t go to a screen like that when I use devices like the iPhone 17 Pro Max, the iPad Pro M5, the MacBook Pro M series, and a M3 MacBook Air.

I did side by side comparisons with the same content as well just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

Overall really nice device though. Great build quality, nice keyboard and trackpad, decent sounding audio, ran apps well, etc.

UPDATE: I BOUGHT THE NEO BECAUSE I AM LOOKING TO REPLACE MY 15” M3 MBA WITH A SMALLER DEVICE AS THE MBA IS MY NON-WORK PERSONAL LAPTOP. I BOUGHT THE NEO TO PUT IT THROUGH ITS PACES AT HOME OVER A SEVERAL DAY PERIOD, NOT A FLEETING HANDFUL OF MINUTES IN A RETAIL STORE. I INTENDED TO KEEP IT AND DON’T REGULARLY RETURN PRODUCTS TO APPLE. THE SPECS OF A SCREEN ARE NOT ENOUGH TO KNOW AHEAD OF TIME WITHOUT USING THE DEVICE WHETHER IT’S ACCEPTABLE OR NOT.
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It's $499-599.

Your device choice tells anyone that you're not the market.

What is maddening about this is the carbon footprint of the return and refurb process.
 
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Pbwallstreet said:
But we're holding it wrong! Right back at you: I get the impression there is something wrong with your eyes to not see an inferior screen.

I posted this and will provide it here - the Neo screen:

  • It does not support P3, but rather, it's just a sRGB panel. That means it is unable to show a larger array of colours: ~30% less colour spectrum compared to a MBA for instance.
  • No white balance adjustment.
  • 60 Hz refresh rate.
  • Lower contrast.
  • Lower anti-reflectivity coating.
  • Importantly, and most significantly, the Neo screen is not laminated. That means there is an air gap between the outer glass and the underlying LCD, which is the reason I saw distortions. Delaminated screens are like taking a piece of glass and hovering it above a page of a book in a lit room: it can create distortions of the content, particularly if viewed from slight angles and the air gap traps light, slightly washing out the screen.
Overall, this adds up to why this Max Tech guy says, as he compares the Neo to a MacBook Air screen:

"It's a big difference. Honestly this [the Neo] makes the Air screen look like an OLED. We did not EXPECT this big of a difference"​
Click to expand...
The question is: Does this make any difference to the target audience and the use case for this device? I say no.
 
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maflynn said:
I'm not surprised and in all honesty, there's a level of choice-supportive bias. That is people are defending their purchase of the neo as superior and if someone challenges it they have an emotional response. We all do it and I'm just as guilty
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That's the truth. Some of the posters are even challenging the OP's sense of vision 😅

A former coworker of mine who's a professional musician (he plays classical music of various kinds) can hear the most subtle changes in tone, notes, and so on, while I don't. There is not a possible way for me to equal his sense of hearing. Not all of us at unison see, or hear, or feel, identically the same.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
I can understand returning a product where you aren't an experienced user and didn't know the specs ahead of time, not to mention didn't already have computers whereby you could cogently see where the Neo would fall. In my opinion. you don't fall into that category. You got caught up in the hype which can happen to some. And instead of taking a step back and getting some clarity, you dove head first into the hype.

I have also never really understood why so many here feel compelled to constantly tell strangers they returned an item to the store. People don't normally do that kind of thing but, it seems on MR it always has to be a a bigger fanfare than needed.
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It's these real user takes that are appreciated
 
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Just bought my Sequoia Neo

A refurb M4 15” MBA (16/1TB) in Silver.

😂

I wanted to give a Neo a run, but I can’t go back from 4K/120 on my OLED external.
And, honestly, for me the smaller than 15” screens on laptops are just not that enjoyable anymore (for when away from home dock setup)
 
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eltoslightfoot said:
I saw one today and this is what it does excel at. It's a great price.
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He tests real world use and that's how comparisons should be. 8GB RAM is still plently. I couldn't care less about all those YouTube "influencers" who feel they need to film every second when leaving the house, to when they go into the Apple store, to when they get back into the car, to getting back home. All this before they show anything remotely valuable.

Here's another good video. I honestly can't see myself ever buying another Windows PC. But over the next coming months. I'm expecting several PC manufacturers to respond.

 
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DeepSix said:
He tests real world use and that's how comparisons should be. 8GB RAM is still plently. I couldn't care less about all those YouTube "influencers" who feel they need to film every second when leaving the house, to when they go into the Apple store, to when they get back into the car, to getting back home. All this before they show anything remotely valuable.

Here's another good video. I honestly can't see myself ever buying another Windows PC. But over the next coming months. I'm expecting several PC manufacturers to respond.

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Yes they will try to respond sure but with Windows fragmentation into Intel and ARM, Windows 11 or Chrome OS, it is much harder to compete.
 
DeepSix said:
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Just Josh has gone down hill. I’ve taken his advice a couple of times on Windows laptops as just a media device and had several issues with stuff like trackpads, keyboards, and displays. I have no idea how he missed such basic flaws on the ones he tests. Now with the Neo he complains about things like lack of touchscreen, no MacBook has, and he would recommend a Surface laptop that is hundreds more and runs like trash In daily use. Just because a device has a feature doesn’t mean it works well.

The Neo isn’t perfect but people are grasping at straws to compare a Windows similar device at the price point and build quality.
 
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