Five hundred bucks. That’s the price difference between the MacBook Neo and the MacBook Air. Having spent a lot of time testing and using both laptops in the MacBook lineup, I can say that there’s a clear demographic for both of these devices.
As a longtime laptop tester, my goal here is twofold. I want to make sure that you buy the right MacBook, and I also want to make sure you don’t overpay or underbuy. Deciding isn’t actually as difficult as you might think. Don’t think you want a MacBook after all? Don’t forget to check out our guides to the Best Windows Laptops, the Best Chromebooks, or the Best Linux Laptops.
The Easy Way to Decide
There’s one easy question to answer if you’re stuck between the Neo and the Air. Is this for a job that you will use full-time? Because if you’re sitting in front of this laptop for eight hours a day, don’t bother considering the MacBook Neo. You’ll likely be tempted by the price, but it’s compromises are just too many. Trust me.
On the other hand, if you answered “No” to that question, you can likely save some cash by buying the MacBook Neo without being bothered by some of its deficiencies. For example, a lot of people have a work PC or laptop at the office, but then need something for weeknights, weekends, or to travel with. It also works perfectly for a student, whether in high school or college.
I know that’s an oversimplified way of thinking about it, but it’s a good place to start.
Design, Size, and Aesthetics
There’s a small difference in size, but it isn’t as significant as you might assume. The MacBook Neo’s screen is 13 inches, measured diagonally, which is over half an inch smaller than the 13.6-inch MacBook Air. As someone who frequently works on a MacBook Air, I found it pretty easy to switch to the slightly smaller Neo. You can also upgrade to the 15-inch MacBook Air, which gives you a significantly bigger canvas to work on. But that also costs an extra $200. In terms of portability, the MacBook Air is 0.44 inches versus the 0.50 inches of the Neo. Again, not a huge difference—especially since they’re identical in weight.
The MacBook Neo does depart from the MacBook formula in terms of design in a few key ways. It’s a bit more playful than other MacBooks, using rounder edges, white keycaps, and some more brighter color options. They’re nowhere near as daring as the iMac colors, but you get to choose between Silver, Blush, Citrus, and Indigo. Silver and Blush are more subtle, while Citrus and Indigo are the bolder options. My favorite aspect of the MacBook Neo is the lack of a notch, though. Don’t get me wrong: I want thin bezels on my laptop like everyone else, but I’ve always found the notch to be an ugly solution.
All that to say, both the MacBook Air and MacBook Neo are beautiful laptops that share more in common than not. The keyboards are nearly identical in terms of the typing experience, including the spacing on the keys and the layout. The one difference is that only the upgraded version of the MacBook Neo (which starts at $699) gets you Touch ID built into the power button. That’s a shame because that means you’ll be typing in your password a lot on the base version of the Neo.
The MacBook Air has a better trackpad. It’s larger and has a haptic feedback system rather than a mechanical click. That gives a quieter and more consistent clicking surface across the whole trackpad, even along the edges. The MacBook Neo’s trackpad is still high-quality, but I just don’t like how loud the physical click it is.
Performance Differences
Rather than an M4 or M5, the MacBook Neo uses an iPhone chip, the A18 Pro. That’s enough to raise an eyebrow, but it’s actually not the most important aspect of this laptop’s performance. (As it turns out, the A18 Pro is a pretty solid MacBook chip, landing somewhere between the M1 and M2.) The bigger problem is the 8 GB of memory. There’s no option to upgrade to 16 GB, while the MacBook Air starts with that much.
I observed that macOS itself eats up around 6 GB of RAM at idle, largely thanks to all the background AI tasks that now run in the background. Getting the system to actually slow down requires loading up dozens of Chrome tabs, some YouTube streams, and a few open applications—but it is possible. It’s the kind of situation you could accidentally find yourself in if you aren’t considering just how much you’re piling on. If you’re coming from a powerful laptop with lots of memory, that situation isn’t as hard to stumble into as you might think.
Meanwhile, the M5 in the MacBook Air truly is the latest and greatest from Apple. It’s overkill for what most people will do with it, but that’s the magic of it being in a device as thin and quiet as the MacBook Air. It allows this laptop to do almost anything.
I say “almost” because the M5 Pro or M5 Max MacBook Pros exist. Those more powerful MacBook Pros primarily exist to speed up tasks like AI-enhanced video production or renders for professionals who don’t have time to wait around. However, the MacBook Air is plenty powerful to let you dabble in all sort of creative applications. It’s also going to fare better than the Neo at playing games, as the M5 has some very capable graphics onboard. The Air will also get you a couple more hours of battery life, depending on the task.
Another performance difference includes the storage and ports. The MacBook Air’s internal SSD is much, much faster than the MacBook Neo. It also has a MagSafe 3 charging jack, and two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. The Neo is limited to just two USB-C ports, and one of them is only USB 2.0, a surprisingly out-of-date standard that will be frustratingly slow for file transfers. Perhaps the biggest limitation with the ports is in external display support. The M5 MacBook Air can support up to two 5K external monitors (or two 4K monitors up to 144 Hz), while the Neo is limited to just a single 4K monitor.
If you want to run a whole workstation with multiple displays off your laptop, the MacBook Air is the way to go.
Multimedia
Thus far, I have not mentioned the display. It is possibly the most important feature of the MacBook Neo. The high-pixel density makes a standout laptop—for the price. But it’s more or less equivalent with the MacBook Air in terms of quality. Technically, the Air has slightly better color performance, but not enough to be noticeable.
The MacBook Air does have the upper hand in both the speakers and webcam, though. It has a four-speaker system with two tweeters and two woofers. They sound excellent, especially for this size of laptop. The MacBook Neo is a downgrade to just stereo speakers and sound a bit more like a standard laptop. The webcam is similar. It’s 1080p resolution, just like the MacBook Air, but the MacBook Neo doesn’t have the same 12-megapixel sensor. The end result is less detail and worse low-light performance.
You Should Probably Get the MacBook Air
With some of those details in mind, you should have a pretty clear idea by now which option will work best for you. I still think most people should buy the M5 MacBook Air. The 13-inch model starts at $1,099 now, which is $100 more than it did in the previous generation. But this time, it also comes with twice as much storage. It’s a decked-out computer that you probably not need to replace for many, many years.
Thanks to its aggressive price, the MacBook Neo is also an attractive purchase, so long as you know what you’re getting into. If you’re a parent looking for an affordable, attractive laptop for a high school student, or someone who needs a night-and-weekends computer, it will be fine.
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