Most of Apple’s announcements this week have been fairly straightforward internal updates to existing products, give or take some big architectural changes to its high-end processors.
But Apple has saved its most interesting announcement for today: The MacBook Neo is a brand-new lower-cost member of Apple’s laptop family and will take over for the 13-inch MacBook Air as the company’s entry-level laptop. The new laptop starts at $599, the same as the M1 MacBook Air that Apple has been selling through Wal-Mart in the US, and much lower than the $1,099 starting price for the new M5 MacBook Air.
The new MacBook will go up for preorder today and will be available on March 11, and you’ll be able to buy it directly through Apple’s website and retail stores in addition to third-party retailers. It’s available in four colors: silver, indigo, a pink-ish color called “blush,” and the yellow-ish “citrus.”
The MacBook Neo does make some fairly substantial compromises to hit its lower price. Most notably, it includes an Apple A18 Pro processor rather than an M-series chip. This chip includes a six-core CPU with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, compared to four P-cores and six E-cores for a typical M-series chip like the M4 and M5. It also uses just five GPU cores, down from the M4 and M5’s typical 10, and is limited to 8GB of memory. This is enough to support Apple Intelligence and basic computing, but the laptop will likely struggle with loading more than a couple-dozen browser tabs or high-end professional and creative apps.
The screen is also a bit of a step down from the MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch 2560×1664 screen. Apple says it’s a 13-inch LCD with a 2408×1506 resolution and 500 nits of maximum brightness. It does not support the P3 wide color gamut or Apple’s True Tone technology, unlike the old M1 MacBook Air. It has rounded upper display corners like the current MacBook Airs and Pros, but doesn’t include the notch. The MacBook is also capable of driving a single external display—up to 4K at 60 Hz, disqualifying it from powering Apple’s 5K Studio Displays. That’s the same number of external screens that the M1 Air supported but is down from a maximum of two external displays for the M4 and M5 MacBook Airs.
The new MacBook also features a pair of USB-C ports rather than Thunderbolt ports; one of those is a full USB 3 port supporting 10 Gbps data transfers, and the other is a 480 Mbps USB 2 port, but both are usable for charging the laptop. The MacBook Neo lacks a MagSafe port, but the headphone jack is present and accounted for—Apple has happily removed this connector from the iPhone and iPad but has yet to start removing it from new Macs.
The MacBook Neo includes a color-matched version of Apple’s chiclet keyboard. It does have a Touch ID button, but only on the upgraded $699 model with 512GB of storage. It also uses a 1080p webcam, and Apple says it will get up to 16 hours of battery life on its 36.5 WHr battery.
The new MacBook is part of a string of announcements that Apple has made this week in the run-up to a “special experience” event this morning. The company has also announced a new iPhone 17e, an updated iPad Air with an M4 chip and additional RAM, new MacBook Pros with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, updated Studio Displays, and M5 MacBook Airs.
