Ready for whatever your day brings, MacBook Neo flies through
everyday tasks and apps. Choose from four stunning colors in a
durable aluminum design. With a brilliant 13-inch Liquid Retina
display,* the A18 Pro chip built for AI and Apple Intelligence,*
and up to 16 hours of battery life,* it’s an amazing Mac at a
surprising price.
Review: Impressive web PC, first time mac user, massive upgrade
over a 4 year old Lenovo Yoga 13 - The neo is really impressive
for $600. It has a nice screen, an incredibly rigid aluminum
chassis, loads web pages and videos super fast, boots quick.
Impressive Bluetooth and WiFi range and performance (Bluetooth is
so much better then my old laptop), good speakers(for a laptop),
good battery life, a decent keyboard, excellent trackpad, decent
web cam, looks nice, low heat output and no vents to get blocked,
compact and light. Highly recommended for anyone shopping for a
compact web machine. The only negatives on the hardware are: lack
of keyboard backlight, the interior edge of the chassis is sharp,
not enough to cut you, but enough to be annoying when typing in
some positions, not many ports just a normal USB C and a 2.0
speed USB C (both can be used for charging) and screen does not
fold flat, so the laptop cannot be stood up against the wall. I
was a bit unsure about the Neo because of it using a cellphone
chip, but that was not a problem at all. The Neo is super snappy,
as fast as my Workstation/Gaming PC when loading web pages and
videos. Also I have not noticed any issues with the amount of
RAM, 8GB seems sufficient for running a web browser, just as long
as you do not go crazy on tabs in Chrome or if you use Firefox
that actually manages tabs properly. As a web browser machine I
doubt that this will have any performance issues. I am sure that
you would hit limits of the mobile CPU if you do did something
serious like video editing, but it is more then enough for more
casual use. As someone who had never used a mac before I was a
bit apprehensive about trying a different OS, but really it has
been fine. I mostly just use my laptop to run a web browser, so I
do not interact with the OS that much and MacOS is really pretty
nice in many ways. The hardest thing to get used to will be the
copy paste shortcuts using command instead of ctrl. Mostly MacOS
functions about the same as windows, just better. You can just
shut the lid on the Neo and it actually shuts off without hardly
using any battery and instantly resumes when you open it again.
When you do shut it down boot time is super fast. Mac's update
system is pretty unobtrusive and just not stupid like windows
update. Mac wants you to sign up to all of their AI and cloud
stuff, but you do not have to. I did not even setup the app
store. The only apps that I wanted were Firefox and a system wide
EQ for my earbuds. I found eqMac on gethub, the free version
works pretty well. Anyway don't let the different OS scare you
away, MacOS is pretty decent and not really that much different
then windows. I got used to it in 2 days of use. Also it should
get 7 years of software support. Here is a comparison of the Neo
with the 4 year old Lenovo Yoga 13 it is replacing. The Lenovo
was $550 when new so a very similar price category from 4 years
ago. Not sure if this will be useful to anyone so I am putting
this at the end, but I figure that a lot of people will be in the
same situation switching from a budget windows machine from a few
years ago, Overall the Neo is better in almost every way, except
for the screen not being able to fold around like the yoga and
the lack of a backlit keyboard. The Neo is much faster, it way
outperforms the AMD 4650u in my old lenovo when it comes to
loading web pages and videos. My old laptop had started really
chugging lately when loading YouTube and twitch videos. Not sure
it there is something wrong my old laptop it or if web sites have
just gotten that much harder to run. My old lenovo Yoga 13 has an
absurd amount of flex in the plastic chassis, when you pick up
one corner of the device the other edge sags visibly, the
keyboard flexes noticeably when typing, the entire chassis will
twist with very little effort. The chassis has also cracked in
several places and I have been having to superglue it back
together to keep the chassis from literally falling apart. The
Neo on the other hand is completely rigid you can lift it
anywhere, no flex in the keyboard, you would have to really try
to do anything to this thing, it is amazing for a laptop of any
price, much less a $600 one. Unless you really do something
terrible to it I expect the Neo chassis to last well beond the
lifetime of the hardware. The battery life on the neo is great, I
would say it is about twice that of the lenovo, even though I
just put a new battery in my lenovo 6 months ago. The Bluetooth
range on the Neo is at least 2 times better, my earbuds would
loose connection to the lenovo if I walked 20 feet away to go to
the bathroom. I can walk anywhere in the house and stay connected
to the Neo, range of about 40+ feet in the house and about 80+
feet outside. Not only the range is better but also Bluetooth
connects faster and just works kind of flawlessly, while in
windows I constantly had odd Bluetooth issues. This is with just
some basic $30 Anker Bluetooth earbuds. WiFI range and throughput
is also much better then my old laptop The yogo 13 had a good
screen, so I do not find the screen of the Neo a huge upgrade, it
is noticeably more vibrant and it is higher res, although I found
1980x1080 to be fine at this size. Also the Yoga 13 screen could
fold all of the way back and around into any position you want
and it was touchscreen, so some improvements and some downsides.
Still the color on the Neo screen is very nice. The speakers in
the Neo are many times better then the the Lenovo, my old Pixel
phone even easily outdid the Lenovo, it had impressively bad
speakers. The webcam on the Neo is also a big upgrade over the
Lenovo, higher res and just better all around. The Neo has a
macbook keyboard, so generally it is a very good laptop keyboard.
It is not my favorite type of keyboard, but it works quite well
and is fast to type. The trackpad is great, it is so much better
then any windows computer trackpad that I have used, it functions
a bit different so it takes a bit of getting used to, but it is
just so much better then windows trackpads. As the Neo uses a
cellphone chip it does not really need any cooling, so there are
no vents and the chassis never gets hot or even warm. My old
lenovo would get uncomfortably hot when charging and I had to be
careful not to block the vents when using it on a bed or blanket,
but that is not a problem with the Neo. There are no vents to
block. Overall this thing is just impressive for $600 and I just
do not see any windows laptop coming close to competing for a
thin and light web machine. Sure if you want something that can
game or do more intensive work stuff, but I just wanted something
to run a web browser and this does that incredibly well while
also being a beautifully well made device.
Review: Great Laptop! - Perfect smaller sized and perfect priced
MacBook. It does everything well at a fraction of the cost. Great
battery life, great screen quality, and the device design feels
nice and sturdy like a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
