6 Major Mac Features The MacBook Neo Doesn’t Have – BGR

Rumors about Apple’s cheap new MacBook have been floating around for a while. Despite that, when Apple officially announced the MacBook Neo this week, most customers were surprised by the specs and the launch price. Starting at $599, Apple is targeting this new Mac at students and people who need a computer for lightweight tasks like web browsing, spreadsheets, and multimedia consumption. Nonetheless, it’s important to note that the MacBook Neo doesn’t come without compromises. Neither does it feature the best display on a Mac, nor does it feature a good selection of ports.

While Apple previously touted the MacBook Air as the laptop for the everyday user, the company is now offering a way cheaper option, since the Air now starts at $1,099. On paper, the MacBook Neo seems like the perfect budget-friendly Mac with fun colors, a powerful processor compared to Chromebooks, and an aluminum finish that makes it look premium. However, to achieve that price point, Apple had to make several compromises. In case you’re planning to pick one up, here are the major features you’ll lose out on compared to other Macs.

Apple’s MacBook Neo is the first Mac to run on an iPhone chip. In this case, Apple offers a binned A18 Pro, which is similar to the processor running the show on the iPhone 16 Pro. The main difference here is that the iPhone has a 6-core GPU, while the MacBook Neo has a 5-core GPU. Early benchmarks reveal the MacBook Neo achieved a single-core score of 3461 and a multi-score of 8668. The Metal score was 31286. These benchmarks put this Mac on par with the M1 MacBook Air in multi-score (8342) and Metal (33148) scores, but it crushes the single-core experience (2346), as it’s closer to an M3 or M4 chip in this regard.

While this is great news for potential customers, and Apple even says it’s 3x faster for on-device AI workflows and up to 50% faster for everyday tasks like using the web than the “bestselling PC with the latest Intel Core Ultra 5,” it’s important to note that Apple is focusing on simple, on-device tasks. One of the main reasons for this “simpler” approach is the lack of more RAM options, as the MacBook Neo only comes with 8 GB of memory. All the other Macs, on the other hand, start with at least 16 GB of memory. It’s possible that with upcoming software updates, some features may not make their way to the Neo due to limited RAM.

The lack of customization is one of the MacBook Neo’s worst weaknesses. After all, you can only have 8 GB of memory on the laptop. The only thing you can choose, besides the colors, is the amount of storage. The base variant has 256 GB of storage, and you’ll need to pay $100 more to upgrade to 512 GB, which also gets support for Touch ID. With other Macs, you may be able to get more CPU or GPU cores, an upgraded chip, more RAM, or a lot more storage. You can even get faster chargers with some Macs. While limiting the MacBook Neo makes sense, especially because it can push more users to splurge on the more expensive MacBook Air and Pro models, 8 GB of RAM in 2026, especially when more and more people are using LLMs and generative AI, is definitely low.

Apple has upgraded all the other Mac models with at least 16 GB of RAM, and this is useful not only for AI tasks and the upcoming, all-new Siri, but also for multitasking. Since the primary target audience here is students, and Apple is anyway offering a $100 student discount, there should have been an option to upgrade to a higher tier in terms of memory. Perhaps the 512 GB storage variant could have 12 GB of RAM for extra headroom.

If you’ve used MacBooks or iPads in the past, you probably know that Apple uses top-notch panels. Personally, I love the OLED panel of my M4 iPad Pro and even the miniLED screen on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. These displays have great brightness indoors and outdoors, they don’t reflect light that much (even though a nano-texture option is starting to feel more and more like my possible next upgrade), have support for ProMotion, and are ideal for creative workflows, thanks to accurate color reproduction. For the MacBook Neo, it seems like we’re looking at a slightly inferior display — similar to the one found on the base-model iPad.

Of course, it’s not to say the display is bad or pixelated, but with only sRGB support instead of P3 Wide color, images won’t be as poppy and pretty as they are in all other Apple devices. This laptop also lacks True Tone, which adjusts the contrast and color temperature to match the ambient lighting in the room. Needless to say, the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz, just like the MacBook Air. That said, if the MacBook Neo is going to be your first Mac, you’ll probably not notice these differences. However, if you already have an iPad Air or Pro, the Neo’s display may seem like a downgrade.

Apple’s MacBook Neo offers two USB-C ports — one USB 3 and another USB 2. While it’s definitely better than the older 12-inch MacBooks with a single USB-C port, it seems the reason why Apple offers two different USB-C standards for this computer is due to a limitation of the A18 Pro. After all, iPhones only feature a single USB-C port. The company likely had to make a software tweak to make the laptop understand a second different port, as explained by MacWorld’s Filipe Espósito.

With that, the second, slower USB 2 port is just a makeshift solution so users can connect another peripheral when charging their laptop. More interestingly, 9to5Mac discovered that the MacBook Neo will warn you if you plug your laptop into a display via the “wrong” port, as both of them look visually the same. With transfer speeds of up to 10Gb/s on the USB 3 port, and 480Mb/s for the USB 2 port, Apple also limits the number of displays you can connect to this laptop to a single one with up to 4K 60Hz support. Needless to say, you also miss out on an HDMI port and an SD card reader found on the MacBook Pro.

Last but not least, the battery department of the MacBook Neo doesn’t look as good as that of other Apple laptops. For example, the MagSafe port is not present on this device, which means that you need to use one of the USB-C ports of the Neo to charge it. If that’s not enough, Apple doesn’t mention fast charging support for this machine, which means it’s limited to just 20W, as confirmed by the adapter in the box. While the MacBook Neo is slightly thicker than the MacBook Air, it doesn’t mean Apple is filling it up with a ton more battery. According to Apple, this device has a 36.5-watt-hour capacity, while the MacBook Air features a 53.8-watt-hour battery.

In real-life usage, Apple claims 16 hours of web browsing on the MacBook Neo and 18 hours of battery life on the MacBook Air. At the end of the day, battery life depends on every individual’s usage patterns. But knowing that it will take longer to charge, along with a battery that may not last too long can turn out to be an issue in the long run. Apart from that, there are a few other little things the MacBook Neo lacks, like the new Center Stage camera, an LED next to the camera to indicate when it’s in use, improved speakers and mics, and even a backlit keyboard.