The low-cost MacBook you’ve been waiting for has arrived.
Following months of rumors and speculation, Apple on Wednesday announced the MacBook Neo, a new notebook featuring the A18 Pro chip with a retail price starting at $599.
The notebook is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip, the A18 having debuted in 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro models. Apple has stated that the chip is up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, up to 3x faster for on-device AI workloads, and up to 2x faster for tasks like photo editing.
Where specs are concerned, the MacBook Neo boasts a 13-inch Liquid Retina display with a 2408-by-1506 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and an anti-reflective coating. The display itself lacks a notch, and instead features uniform, iPad-style bezels.
The MacBook Neo is available in Silver, Indigo, Blush, and Citrus color options, with the colored finishes extending to the Magic Keyboard in lighter shades and come with matching wallpapers. The notebook itself weighs 2.7 pounds, and features two USB-C porrts (one being a USB-C 2 port with support for speeds up to 480 Mb/s and one is a USB-C 3 port with support for speeds up to 10 Gb/s), along with a headphone jack.
The MacBook Neo also offers a 16-hour battery life, 8GB of unified memory, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6 connectivity, a 1080p front-facing camera, dual mics with directional beamforming, and dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio.
The retail price starts at $599 for the entry-level MacBook, which offers 256GB of storage along with the Magic Keyboard or $699 for the 512GB model, which arrives with the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Education customers can purchase the notebook at a $499 price point.
Apple also pointed out that the MacBook Neo is Apple’s lowest-carbon Mac, and that it’s composed from 60 percent recycled materials. These materials include 90 percent recycled aluminum and 100 percent recycled cobalt in the battery.
The MacBook Neo is available to pre-order starting today, with availability beginning on Wednesday, March 11.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
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