A truly budget-friendly MacBook is now a reality. On March 4, 2026, Apple announced the MacBook Neo, its $599 laptop with a 13-inch display, colorful aluminum chassis, and the A18 Pro processor. A modern Mac that costs half as much as the new MacBook Air with the M5 chip is a tempting offer, but before you pull the trigger, you should be aware of several differences between the new baby MacBook and the well-established, go-to MacBook Air. Here is our specs comparison.
The MacBook Neo is a textbook entry-level laptop. For $599, you get a 13-inch computer with a Retina display and a maximum brightness of 500 nits. It does not support P3 wide color, and it has no notch, with bezels noticeably thicker than those of the MacBook Air.
No MagSafe. And no, that is not a card reader, that is a speaker.
Most of the differences you will find inside. The computer runs the A18 Pro chip, a processor found in the iPhone 16 Pro lineup, paired with 8GB of RAM. Unlike the MacBook Air, 8GB is the only option here, and you cannot upgrade to 16GB, which is now standard in the MacBook Air lineup. Memory bandwidth is significantly lower at 60 GB/s vs. 153 GB/s in the MacBook Air. As for storage, you get to choose from 256GB in the base model or a more expensive 512GB variant.
