Neo: A cheap MacBook for the masses

Apple just shook up the laptop market with its “cheap and cheerful” Neo,
said Nicole Nguyen in The Wall Street Journal. At $599, the Neo, released last week, is “a different vibe” for a company known for “pricey, premium products.” Its “candy-colored hues” hark back to the whimsical iBook days of the early 2000s. And the lower entry point is “a well-calculated strategy” with PC prices on the rise due to the memory-chip shortage. Ultimately, “what really matters is how well the laptop can run apps,” and in my trial, the Neo acquitted itself well. “I opened over 25 browser tabs” without issue and saw demos of the computer handling an apparel design app and a live 3D video game.

“This is the smartest move Apple has made in years,” said M.G. Siegler in Spyglass. The Neo is $200 cheaper than last year’s entry-level MacBook Air with very little noticeable reduction in the specs. It offers up to 512 gigabytes of storage (more than the Air) and up to 16 hours of battery life. The one drawback may be that it comes with only 8 gigabytes of RAM, which is not “going to cut it” for serious programmers who “want to play around with some localized AI.” But if you’re a college student, “the Neo should do just fine,” said Jada Jones in ZDNet. It packs more than enough under the hood for someone whose “digital learning experience mostly involves writing papers, accessing textbooks, completing online quizzes, watching lectures, researching, and writing online discussion posts.” And Apple lowered the price to $499 for students, so they won’t need to beg Mom and Dad to expand the tech budget.

Apple has been quietly raising prices on its other products “in the face of
global economic turbulence and that memory crunch,” said Dave Lee in
Bloomberg. It lifted the base price for its new MacBook Air by $100, while
some MacBook Pro models have gone up $400. Apple is clearly “leaning on its premium customers to eat the costs that make a budget MacBook possible.” Will it work? Well, the timing couldn’t be better, because other laptop makers have also had to raise prices. The Neo is now “ready to swoop in for those consumers who will browse the aisles at Best Buy and quickly realize that dropping $500 on a Windows laptop doesn’t go as far as it did last year.” At $499, the Asus Vivobook 14 can support two external displays and has twice the storage of the Neo, said Luke Larsen in Wired. And HP’s $500 OmniBook 5 offers “far better color performance and contrast.” Credit Apple for entering the discount discussion—but don’t crown it the winner of the budget-laptop battle quite yet.

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