The $599 Question Nobody Thought Apple Would Answer
Apple launched the MacBook Neo on March 11 for $599 — or $499 with a student discount. Before MKBHD (Marques Brownlee) dropped his full review on March 10, the consensus was pretty simple: it's a budget machine, it cuts corners, it's probably not for you if you're reading a tech article. After a week with the thing, his verdict flipped that narrative. "Not only is this really good, I think it's potentially Apple's most disruptive product in the last 10 plus years," Brownlee says [1]. Not because it pushes new technology forward — but because it takes proven, mass-produced tech and puts it in a package that should make the entire Windows and Chromebook industry nervous.
The Benchmarks: An iPhone Chip That Matches M1
The MacBook Neo runs the A18 Pro — the same chip powering the iPhone 16 Pro. On paper that sounds like a downgrade compared to Apple Silicon's Mac lineup. In practice, the numbers are wild. Geekbench multi-core scored over 8,500. That's right on top of M1. Metal and OpenCL GPU benchmarks land at M1 levels, and single-core performance actually leans toward M3 territory. Cinebench results confirm the same story [1]. For a chip Apple has been cranking out by the millions for iPhones, that's a jaw-dropping result in a Mac. The A18 Pro was already capable of editing 4K video on an iPhone. Turns out it handles macOS just fine too. The 8GB of RAM is the main caveat. It fills up fast, especially in Chrome. But Apple's swap system — which uses the SSD as overflow memory — keeps things running smoothly for most tasks. The SSD reads at around 1,500 MB/s, fast enough to make swap basically invisible in daily use. Brownlee notes the real concern is long-term: as the drive fills up over years, older machines tend to slow down. But right now, for 2026 tasks, it handles web browsing, spreadsheets, emails, music, and word processing simultaneously without breaking a sweat.
