MacBook Neo Review: No Other Budget Laptop Can Compete

> PC Magazine came to the same conclusion:

> Similar to the Verge:

Apple pays well. Budget laptop at 600 Euros ? And can't compete having a tablet processor, 8 MB RAM, 256 MB SSD. 2 USB ports (one i presume used for charging) ? Yeah. It really can't compete with better options.

Out of budget for my parents but I'll pay the difference myself. It's just painful to see them use their pile of shit $300 laptop that can barely open a text editor, sounds like a jet engine and has about 45 minutes of battery life.

The only haptic feedback they get if the entire fucking thing creaking as soon as you lightly touch it.

They've been through at least 5 of them since I bought my 2015 mbp, which is still working fine in every aspects

I work professionally on a Macbook Air 16GB now and I have quite a few docker images and services running bare metal, + browser, vscode etc. on top. Not a problem until I start loading up some LLMs.

The paging works wonderfully well; an advantage of everything being fused.

If anything, I'm much more bound by the CPU limitations and the eco-cores than the memory.

On a PC, I wouldn't think about less than 32GB for a dev pc.

If I had a fulltime gig programming C, I'd even say I could work on this A14 8GB device. Why not? It's as powerful as a 10 year old powerful machine; probably. Or in that ballpark.

Fortunately/unfortunately for Apple, the M1 MacBook Air from 2020 is still a great laptop.

The form factor is the defining characteristic, because that informs how people use it. The CPU does not.

As for your comparisons: My aunt doesn't need a terabyte of storage or a Ryzen 7 5700U, she needs 15+ hours of battery life because the laptop is going to live next to her spot on the couch and she most likely can't remember to plug it in every night.

Also the first laptop is from a reputable brand called NIAKUN. They must have amazing customer service and unbeatable warranties, right? =) And they certainly will exist in 12 months when you go look for the brand on Amazon and won't be replaced by another random set of letters in all caps selling the exact same product?

The HP is on sale, it's MSRP is $699 and for some weird fucking reason has the numpad on it, making the whole keyboard wonky. Who wants that on a laptop?

And the final thing, as with all price-forward comparisons: build quality. We need an objective standard measurement for chassis and keyboard flex, the ability to open the lid with one finger, the amount of creaking and squeaking said laptop will do in normal use and how hot and loud it gets in your lap when doing light browsing.

I'm sure a similar story can be said about the HP.

If you didn't detect the sarcasm, a laptop is much more than cpu, memory, and storage; it'd be short-sighted to only fixate on this trio. PC laptops compromise on pretty much everything and usually do everything poorly, including CPU (since apple silicon Macs are much better performance per watt).

Then there's the whole aspect of Apple support for both hardware AND software, something no PC vendor can provide.

The latest reviews are showing that's not really the case

I’d give my entire family these ahead of Windows laptops any day.

Now the color options, that's a tragedy.

eww

Laughable. Seriously, how long has it been since the M1 Air dropped? And we're still this clueless?

> For example, you can get a 15.6" Ryzen 7 5700U laptop with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for less than the “unbeatable” price of the Neo:

Awesome spec dump. Now, what's the real life usage battery life of that laptop like? Oh? Yeah, thought so.

Nobody buys a list of specs, they buy a set of capabilities. And the Neo is capable of supporting normal usage for 12h+ on battery. Go ahead and link me some alternative laptops that can do that, with comparable performance of course — which is on par or better than the original M1 Air mind you.

Killer move by Apple, and I'm shocked there's still so much ignorance around.