We Called It: Apple Announces the MacBook Neo!

Last July, we covered early news about Apple introducing a more affordable Macbook by using their smartphone tech to shave some numbers off their laptop sticker price. Well now it’s official! Apple has officially revealed their new MacBook Neo; a new 13-inch laptop powered by the A18 Pro chip!

As we said, it’s almost like using an iPhone as a laptop replacement. Only, you also get the bigger display, the better cooling, and all the peripherals you need.

Power with Apple’s A18 Pro!

Let’s start with the A18 Pro on this laptop. For reference, this is the same chipset found in their previous flagship iPhone 16 Pro Max, making it a top-tier chip in all aspects. It’s a 6-core CPU with 2 Performance Cores and 4 Efficiency Cores paired with a 5-core GPU with support for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, and a 16-core Neural Engine.

It’s all set to support Apple Intelligence out of the box and is confirmed to run the latest macOS. Both models reportedly only come with 8GB unified memory however, with no option to add more as far as we can tell.

Initial tests across single-core, multi-core, and even Metal applications are promising for the A18 Pro, scoring higher than even the older M1 Macbook Air in Geekbench 6 as per Jason Snell’s testing. And with the laptop form factor providing more space for a robust cooling solution, we’re definitely excited to see how far we can push this new budget powerhouse.

Other Hardware Specs

As for the rest of the hardware specs, we know it’ll come with a 13-inch Liquid Retina display at 2408 x 1506 resolution though no word yet on the refresh rate. It does reach up to 500 nits brightness which is excellent for a laptop display. You can easily work outdoors with this.

Apple has cut back a bit on ports though, with the Neo sporting only two USB-C ports, one rated for USB 3 which also doubles as a DisplayPort and the other for USB 2. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack however.

For remote conferencing, the laptop comes with a 1080p FaceTime HD Camera and dual speakers with Spatial Audio support for clearer sound. There’s a dual-microphone array with directional beamforming as well.

In terms of overall proportions, the Neo seems to be similar to the more popular MacBook Air models, coming in at around .5 inches thick and weighing around 1.23kg.

Pricing and Color Variants

Apple’s new MacBook Neo will start at ₱ 39,990 for 256GB of storage and a Magic Keyboard. There’s also a 512GB variant with both the Magic Keyboard and Touch ID for ₱ 46,990. Available colors include Silver, Citrus (Yellow), Blush (Pink), and Indigo. It comes with a 20W Power Adapter and a USB-C Charging Cable in the box.

For gadgets and electronics, get it at Kimstore!