How the MacBook Neo compares to its rivals

For years, the conversation about MacBooks has started and ended in roughly the same place: great laptops, eye-watering prices. The MacBook Air has long been the closest thing to an affordable entry point, and as of the new model, even that sits at a not-inconsiderate $1,099 / £1,099 (the previous model is still available for $999 / £999).

So when Apple announced a brand-new MacBook starting at $599 (£599) – built from aluminium, finished in bold colours, powered by the same chip as the iPhone 16 Pro – the reaction from journalists who got their hands on one was almost universally the same: this shouldn't exist at this price.

So should you actually buy one? The short answer is: it depends heavily on what you do for a living. You may need one of the other best laptops for graphic design or the best laptops for 3D modelling, for example.

Neo's rivals

For starters, here's one very important thing to know. At $599 (£599), there simply isn't another laptop that looks and feels like this.

Take the Acer Aspire 14 with Intel Core 5 — available in the US from around $699 and at Currys in the UK for £499. It's a solid everyday machine with reasonable specs, but it's plastic-bodied and comes with a dim, low-resolution display that makes the Neo's Liquid Retina screen look like it belongs in a different price category entirely. The trackpad is functional but forgettable, and the speakers are exactly what you'd expect at this price.

Then there's the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 14-inch with Intel Core Ultra 7, which goes for around $549 at Best Buy in the US, and the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 14-inch with Intel Core i5 at £599 from Currys in the UK. Lenovo makes genuinely decent budget laptops; arguably the best in the Windows market at this price. But still, the display quality and build finish fall noticeably short of the Neo. You're also running Windows, which, depending on your existing setup and workflow, may or may not be an issue.

If you're open to Chrome OS, the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 with Intel Core Ultra 5 is worth a look at around $599 at Best Buy. It's a well-made 2-in-1 with a touchscreen and solid battery life, and Chrome OS is more capable than many people give it credit for. But it's not the machine for professional creative work: app support remains limited, and the platform simply isn't built around the creative tools most designers, photographers, and video editors rely on.

Why the Neo beats its rivals

Against all of these contenders, the MacBook Neo's 13-inch Liquid Retina display (2,408 by 1,506 pixels, 500 nits of brightness) is in a league of its own. Apple's side-firing speakers also genuinely impress, delivering Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support that none of the competition can match at this price.

The A18 Pro chip, the same silicon inside the iPhone 16 Pro, handles photo editing, light video work and multitasking with ease. Apple claims it's up to 50 per cent faster for everyday tasks than comparable Intel Core Ultra 5 laptops, up to twice as fast on photo-editing specifically, and up to three times faster on on-device AI workloads. The fanless design means it runs in complete silence; genuinely useful if you're recording audio, working in a quiet studio, or simply trying to concentrate.

macOS Tahoe comes pre-installed, bringing with it a mature ecosystem of creative apps (Adobe, Canva, Affinity, GarageBand, Final Cut), along with Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools and Live Translation. If you're coming from Windows, the learning curve is shallow and the experience is noticeably more cohesive.

All of which sounds excellent. And it is... up to a point.

Why you shouldn't necessarily buy one

Here's where we have to be honest with you. The MacBook Neo is an impressive laptop for its price, but it was engineered to hit that price, and the compromises Apple made matter more to creative professionals than to most.

The most significant issue is the display. The Neo uses the sRGB colour gamut, not the P3 wide-colour standard found on every other Apple screen. For photographers, illustrators and designers whose work demands accurate colour representation, that's not a minor footnote; it's a workflow problem.

If you're making colour-critical decisions on a screen that isn't showing the full range, you're working with incomplete information. For content creation, social media work or presentations, it's less of an issue. But ultimately, if colour accuracy matters to your work, the Neo isn't the right tool.

Then there's the RAM. The base model ships with just 8GB and 256GB of storage. For browsing references, working in Canva, editing in Lightroom and managing client communications, that's manageable. For sustained Photoshop work, large multi-layer files or any serious video editing, you'll run into the ceiling faster than you'd like. Stepping up to the $699 (£699) configuration gives you 512GB of storage and Touch ID, but the RAM stays at 8GB regardless of which model you choose.

A few other things are worth flagging too. There's no MagSafe charging port, so you'll sacrifice one of the two USB-C ports to power. The trackpad physically clicks rather than using Apple's Force Touch haptic system (it works well, but it's a step down from other MacBooks). And one of those USB-C ports runs at USB 2.0 speeds, which means slow transfers to and from external drives. If you regularly move large video or photo files, that will frustrate you.

If your budget is genuinely fixed at around $599 (£599) and you need a portable machine for relatively light creative work, the MacBook Neo is still the best thing available at this price. You can pre-order it now from Apple's US store or the UK store, with availability from 11 March.

But if you can stretch your budget – and we'd encourage you to seriously consider it – the MacBook Air M5 (UK store) starts at $1,099 (£1,099) and addresses almost every limitation of the Neo in one go. You get P3 wide colour, the full M5 chip, MagSafe charging, 16GB of RAM as standard, 512GB of storage and Thunderbolt 4 ports for fast external transfers. For professional creative work, it's a far better choice, and the extra $500 (£500) will feel like money well spent every single day you use it. See our MacBook Air M5 hands on for more about this machine.