There is a particular kind of silence that falls over an industry when it realises, albeit too late, that the future is already here. This is the silence of dislocation, of disorientation. Did we know? Could we have known?, two questions being asked in boardrooms. That silence, right now, belongs to the PC makers, only to be broken by Nick Wu, Chief Financial Officer at Asus (or ASUSTeK Computer Inc) who noted in an earnings call in March that the MacBook Neo pricing a “shock”.
Little surprise that on March 20, CEO Tim Cook posted on X, “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” The $600 laptop, priced ₹69,900 in India, isn’t the first time Apple’s Mac computing line-up is giving the Windows PC ecosystem, and chipmakers Intel, AMD and Qualcomm, a series of sleepless nights. Much like the Apple Silicon switch that closed the Intel chapter for Macs in late 2020, the MacBook Neo goes on to effectively demonstrate how far along an “iPhone chip” can go, when made by Apple.
HT’s benchmark tests of the MacBook Neo peg the A18 Pro chip’s single core performance at a score of 3405 in the Geekbench CPU test, within range of the M4 chip’s 3697 score in a 13-inch MacBook Air. We also tested the upcoming Intel Core Ultra X9 388H flagship mobile chip, part of the Panther Lake family on an Asus Zenbook Duo UX8407AA, and that clocked 2933 score in the same benchmark test.
And that’s exactly representing what the MacBook Neo is designed to excel at — more than enough power to handle every day tasks including light video editing, Lightroom photo edits and more, with effortless all-day battery life. This type of benchmark indicates overall snappiness, app launch speed and responsiveness to general daily productivity use cases. The analogy here is, think of it as a single, very fast truck on a highway.
Most Windows laptops in this price band, will fall short on one aspect, if not both. That said, the MacBook Neo will have limitations if you are looking at multi-core performance (score of 8534; that’s Apple M1 territory). The analogy here is, multiple trucks in multiple lanes carrying more cargo, but not necessarily faster than one truck. In terms of heavy tasks, the MacBook Neo can get some video editing done, but will not be equally snappy with effects heavy 4K video editing streams or file compression tasks.
It is not to say everything is perfect. One could call out the rather odd placement of the 3.5mm headphone jack, closer to the user on the left side spine. There’s also confusion about the duality of the two USB-C ports—the one near the lid hinge is USB 3 standard with up to 10Gbps transfer speeds, while the second port is the much older USB 2 standard. The latter shouldn’t be on a machine launched in 2026. The lack of keyboard backlighting is also perplexing.
Battery life more than makes up for any shortcomings. At 50% brightness, this will dip from 100% to 50% after around 11 hours of typical diverse workplace usage. That means more than 2 days of usage, without having to reach for the adapter. Speaking of which, the MacBook Neo can accept up to 30-watt power delivery, though Apple bundles a 20-watt charger.
The 13-inch Liquid Retina display is equally pleasant to work with, with the right mix of crispness and vivid colours. This peaks out at a rated 500 nits of brightness, and while that may be a bit of a limitation outdoors in the afternoon sun, that may be a rarer instance than you may imagine.
And then there’s the build quality, which Windows PCs will again struggle to match. A recycled aluminium enclosure, just 1.23kg and four colours of which three are rather eye-catching (a pink-ish Blush, a green-er Citrus and a very classy Indigo), proves to be a combination no Windows laptop delivers at this price, today.
Some products, as rare as they may be, are more than a product. It’s fallacious to bucket them as such. The Apple MacBook Neo is one such milestone for tech, in a sort of a mission statement. Price only adds to that. A blueprint for the future, something Apple is very confident about, and all this must terrify the Windows PC ecosystem. Theory is fine, practically responding to this benchmark that Apple has set, will not be easy for any PC maker.