Apple MacBook Neo

Where reviewers disagree

• ±Performance · 2 positive, 1 negative, 5 mixed
  Which sources said this

  • 9to5Mac — mixed: 25 Safari tabs plus Music, Messages, Ulysses, Notes, Things and Mimestream with no ceiling hit; credits macOS swap. Single-core is 47% above the M1 Air, 34% above M2 and 10% above M3.
  • TechRadar — mixed: Geekbench 6 single-core 3,535 and Cyberpunk 2077 at 30 fps on the For this Mac preset, but sustained SSD writes of 1,585 / 1,440 MB/s are roughly half the M1 Air's. With Safari, Keynote, GarageBand and a Steam download open, memory use sat at 6.
  • IGN — mixed: The Neo beats the M2 MacBook Air on single-core, but the Air is 25% higher on multi-core, which matches the shape every other source reports.
  • Engadget — mixed: Dozens of tabs across multiple browsers, a show playing, photo editing in Pixelmator Pro and Oceanhorn 3 with no significant slowdown; memory hovered at 80 to 85% and never exceeded it.
  • KitGuru — positive: Awarded 8.5/10, above WIRED's 7/10 and below The Verge's 9/10 and Engadget's 90/100 in the first-hand pool.
  • Macworld — negative: Multi-CPU is equivalent to the M1 chip and in Cinebench 2024 multi-core the Neo is slower than the M1; the SSD is slow compared with the rest of the MacBook line-up.
  • Notebookcheck — positive: 86% overall, above KitGuru's normalised 85% and behind the 90% that Engadget and IGN awarded in the same pool.
  • The Verge — mixed: Measured Geekbench 6 single-core at 3,402 against 2,409 for the M1 Air, but its multi-core table places the Neo below that same M1 Air.

• ±Battery life · 4 positive, 1 negative, 1 mixed
  Which sources said this

  • 9to5Mac — positive: Calls 16 hours of video playback from a 36.5 Wh pack remarkable, and found Apple's 11-hour wireless web figure accurate enough.
  • TechRadar — mixed: 13 h 30 min in the Future battery test, but there is no fast charging and the French box ships without a power adapter at all.
  • IGN — positive: Worked from 08:00 to 18:45 at about 75% brightness and hit 2%, roughly 10 h 45 min, the third-lowest figure in the dossier and still a full working day.
  • Engadget — positive: 12 h 15 min in its 4K video loop, from a 36.5 Wh pack that is small next to the 53.8 Wh MacBook Air.
  • Macworld — positive: 13 h 15 min in a video loop at 150 nits, and notes the UK and EU boxes ship with no power adapter while the US box gets a 20 W one.
  • The Verge — negative: Just under nine hours in mixed use with the screen mostly at 75%; only about 30 W was drawn even from a 140 W charger, giving 45 to 50 minutes to 50%.

• ±Build quality · 4 positive, 1 negative, 2 mixed
  Which sources said this

  • ZDNET — mixed: Calls the missing keyboard backlight a smart cost-cut it rarely uses, but worries about key wear, a machine that is neither repairable nor modular, e-waste and 256 GB upsell pressure.
  • Engadget — positive: Calls the chassis as deeply considered as Apple's most premium hardware, and the mechanical trackpad corner-to-corner in a way PC designs are not.
  • KitGuru — negative: Lists the missing keyboard backlight as a con, alongside WIRED, The Verge, Engadget, TechRadar and 9to5Mac; ZDNET is the only source that disagrees.
  • Macworld — positive: Says it cannot feel any difference between the Neo's aluminium and the Air's or Pro's, and that there is no plastic on its case.
  • Notebookcheck — positive: Workmanship sub-score of 88% and emissions sub-score of 96%, the highest build-related marks in the dossier and consistent with the fanless aluminium chassis.
  • The Verge — positive: All-aluminium unibody; the mechanical trackpad is graded A and clicks corner to corner, unlike the diving-board designs on PC rivals.
  • WIRED — mixed: Finds no compromises with build quality and calls the keyboard excellent; the aluminium unibody is set against plastic rivals at the same price. Lists the missing keyboard backlight as a fault, one of six first-hand reviews to do so.