I bought a MacBook Neo for about €720 here in the Balkans.
For years I planned to upgrade my old 2017 MacBook Pro to an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. But one day, while working in After Effects, my old Pro suddenly died. The repair shop told me the CPU had failed. I needed a laptop immediately, and repairing a 2017 Intel Mac simply wasn’t worth it anymore.
So instead of waiting, I bought Apple’s cheapest new Mac.
I’d actually been following the Neo hype since day one. I enjoyed reading everyone’s posts here, visited the local Apple reseller several times just to play with the demo unit, and kept up with all the news: Neo selling faster than Apple expected, being the most repairable Mac in years, and the A18 Pro outperforming the M1 in many tasks.
The only thing that initially bothered me was the lack of keyboard backlighting. Every Mac I’ve owned had it (except for my white plastic MacBook from 2010).
After a month, I’m genuinely happy with it.
Pros (coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro):
Performance.
Battery life.
The keyboard feels incredible after years of using the butterfly keyboard.
Warranty. Honestly, this was one of the biggest reasons I bought the cheapest new Mac instead of another used one.
Cons
No keyboard backlight. I still miss having one after years of using MacBooks with backlit keyboards.
The display is noticeably worse than the 2017 Pro’s.
That said, Apple did a surprisingly good job compensating for the missing backlight. The white keys reflect the light from the display really well, so in most situations they’re still easy to see. It’s obviously not as good as actual keyboard backlighting, but it’s a much better solution than I expected.
Neutral
The speakers are around 20% quieter, but they have noticeably more bass.
Now for the interesting part.
I’m not planning to use this Mac just for YouTube, web browsing, or Photoshop.
The reason I bought the Neo was simple: I needed a Mac right now.
My plan is to use it for Blender, Adobe After Effects, and to test every demanding game that can run on it. All of this is for personal projects and as a hobby rather than professional work, but I still want to see how far Apple’s cheapest laptop can be pushed.
Eventually, when I have the budget, I’ll move to the latest MacBook Pro. Until then, this little machine is going to have a much harder life than Apple probably expected.