It turns out that $600 laptops don’t have to be made from cheap plastic. The MacBook Neo certainly makes design trade-offs compared to its more expensive siblings, but frankly, the build quality still beats plenty of Windows machines twice this price.
Much of that comes down to the aluminum unibody build. It’s really what helps the MacBook Neo actually feel like a MacBook. Combine that with the relatively light weight (2.7 pounds) and super-thin build (0.5 inches thick), and you have a machine that actually feels quite premium — to the point of almost redefining what laptops in this price point should feel like.
I’ve been loving Apple’s embrace of more fun colors over the past few years — though the MacBook Neo’s aren’t quite my favorite. The laptop comes in Silver, Blush, Citrus, and Indigo. I like them all, but our review unit, in Citrus, is probably my least favorite. Also, I wish Apple would be a little more consistent in its colors. Why not just offer it in the same great color range as the iMac?
So, what are the trade-offs to hit the price point? Well, there are a few. For starters, you won’t get that edge-to-edge display with a notch, like other recent MacBook models. You also only get Touch ID if you upgrade to the $699 model with 512GB of storage. This feels silly — Touch ID is a 13-year-old technology, and it seems like Apple could have shipped it in even the entry-level 256GB model.
Then there are the port-related trade-offs. You get two USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but that’s it. One USB-C port runs at USB 3 speeds (up to 10Gb/s) while the other tops out at USB 2’s 480Mb/s — a pretty significant gap that could trip people up if they’re not careful about which port they’re plugging into for data transfers. Both support charging, which is nice, and there are software hints when you plug a peripheral into the wrong port. But I still would have liked to see both get USB 3.0 — a spec that was launched almost 20 years ago, in 2008.
There’s also no MagSafe on the Neo. Now, this is something I mind less, because I really only use USB-C to charge all my devices. But plenty swear by MagSafe, and regardless, the limited port selection means that if you need to charge, you’ll really only have access to one port for anything else.
All of this, however, is frankly kind of easy to stomach — except perhaps the lack of Touch ID. I rarely use ports of any kind on a laptop, and USB-C dongles are cheap for those that do. The display not being edge-to-edge is something I had to remind myself of, too. The laptop has a stylish and durable design all-around, and it handily beats anything on the Windows side at this price.
