I have a new favorite Mac.
The Neo’s cool color options — “citrus” (green), “blush” (pink), “indigo” (blue) and silver — are part of the appeal.
The Neo’s low price comes with a few compromises. Its keyboard does not light up. Its speakers sound muddy. Memory tops out at a paltry 8 gigabytes. On-board storage tops out at a mere 512 gigs for $799.
Some features might give prospective users pause, though they aren’t defects. For instance, the Neo uses an A18 processor, which is the same chip found in the iPhone 16, instead of an M-class processor like that found in other, beefier Apple laptops.
But I discovered I didn’t need all that power. Like many others, my computing is predominantly Web-based; all my work tools are web-centric, for starters.
MORE: Adapters, monitors, mouse: Key gear to go with your MacBook Neo
I’ve boasted that I can do my job entirely on a Chromebook, a Google-based web portable. But I missed the Mac environment, and the Neo lets me stay there for a price about that of high-end Chromebooks.
My on-loan Neo has been my workhorse for months — and I will miss it terribly when I have to send it back.
What do others think of the Neo? I checked in with one of my St. Paul, Minnesota, neighbors, and with four Mac experts I know.
‘Pretty handy’
After three decades of experience with Mac desktop computers, Marilyn Bach, 87, has her first-ever laptop.
Bach, of St. Paul, who is retired from a career as a University of Minnesota biochemist, invested in Apple’s popular new MacBook Neo at the urging of a computer consultant.
Mark Fawcett, the Minneapolis-based computer consultant who recommended Bach’s machine, said he was initially skeptical of the Neo. He was leery of the computer’s 8 gigabytes of memory, and he had reservations about a phone chip being used to power a laptop.
“I was afraid they were cutting corners too much,” Fawcett, owner of the computer support company Mac Men, said.
He waited for tech reviewers to say as much, so he was surprised when a slew of positive reviews hit.
“The Neo came out, and from everything that I saw, the critics were actually raving about it,” he said. “Neos have been flying off the shelves.”
“So I thought, well, before I can recommend one of them to any of my clients, I need to get a sense of what I’m dealing with,” he said. “So I actually bought a Neo, and I have to say I’ve been very pleased with it.”
Those who edit a lot of video are better off with a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro with their more advanced chips, Fawcett said.
But he was comfortable steering Bach to a Neo since she intends to use it mostly for writing.
“I think it is pretty handy,” said Bach of her silver-colored Neo. She is moving into tighter quarters, she explained, and a notebook will be a better fit than her old desktop iMac.
“Are you nervous about the change?”
“No, I’m not the nervous type,” said Bach, exuding enthusiasm.
‘Perfect computer’
The Neo is “the perfect computer for those people who don’t need a lot of computer — which, I think, at this point, is a lot of people,” said Patrick Rhone, a St. Paul-based technology consultant.
He gives the example of his wife, Bethany, and his daughter, Beatrix.
Bethany “is the sort of user who has dozens and dozens of tabs at once (on her MacBook Pro), and browser windows and documents, all running, full-time,” Rhone said. “Never shuts anything down. Never.
“And the computer she had was straining heavily under the load she put on things,” he said. A Neo was no good for her.
The college-bound Beatrix, on the other hand, is a lighter user better suited for a Neo.
In fact, Rhone was going to invest in one for her — but decided at the last minute to buy his wife a newer, more powerful MacBook Pro, and to pass on her existing MacBook Pro model to his daughter.
‘No regrets’
When the Houston Chronicle recently suspended Dwight Silverman’s longtime technology column, he had to decide how to spend his final paycheck.
“I am so in love with the MacBook Neo,” he said. “My wife said, ‘You do want to buy one?’ and I said, ‘Oh, yeah.”
For Silverman, the Neo is “a little computer that I can just keep on the coffee table and pick up and go, ‘What else has that actor been in?’”
Silverman, who has written about the Neo, likes its extreme portability. “Our kids rent a townhouse from us, and I go over there while waiting for contractors, and I use it there.
“I’ve gotten compliments on it in public,” he added. “If I’m sitting in a coffee shop and I’m using it, people will come up to me and go, ‘Is that a Neo?’
“I have no regrets at all about buying it. Of course, I bought it before the price went up.”
‘Pleasantly surprised’
“I haven’t used a Neo for anything real, I’ve just touched other people’s,” said Adam Engst, editor of the Apple-focused TidBITS news site and newsletter.
“But everyone I’ve talked to has been pleasantly surprised,” said Engst, who has written about the Neo (with yours truly). “These are consultants and developers and whatnot, people who are generally used to running on high-end hardware. And they’ve been very impressed by it so far.”
But “from a student’s standpoint, it’s a little bit trickier,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for college students, mostly, and I’m a little bit hesitant to recommend the MacBook Neo for most college students because I feel like the MacBook Air provides just a little bit more headroom, and college students don’t necessarily know what they’re going to need in the next four years.”
A note
If you’re kicking yourself for missing the Neo at its $599 starting price, note that the Neo is now available in refurbished form for the same cost (with the next-up config going for $679). For Apple, “refurbished” means like-new condition, an exhaustive inspection and a one-year warranty.