Apple's MacBook Neo is impressive for its $600 price, but its A18 Pro processor is one of its biggest compromises compared to a modern MacBook Air— in our review , we found it was more than up to basic computing tasks, but for demanding workloads that benefit from more CPU and GPU cores and RAM, the Air is a better choice.

But those limited computing resources are still enough to run Windows on your Mac using the Parallels Desktop virtualization software— so says Parallels itself , which after some testing and benchmarking has declared the Neo suitable for "lightweight computing and everyday productivity, document editing, and web-based apps" while running Windows 11.

Parallels says the MacBook Neo's respectable single-core CPU performance keeps the Neo feeling "quick and responsive" when running multiple Windows-only software packages, including QuickBooks Desktop and other accounting apps, Microsoft Office, "light engineering and data tools" including AutoCAD LT and MATLAB, and "Windows-only courseware and education software" with "no Mac equivalent." In Parallels' testing, the Neo's single-core CPU performance in Windows was still roughly 20 percent faster compared to a Core Ultra 5 235U chip in a Dell Pro 14 laptop.

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Apple's MacBook Neo is the company's first serious effort to break into the sub-$1,000 laptop business, challenging midrange Windows laptops and Chromebooks with its $599 starting price and its focus on build quality rather than high-end performance.

One less-advertised change that may make the Neo more appealing to businesses, schools, and the accident-prone is that its internal design is a bit more modular and easier to repair than other modern MacBooks. That's our takeaway after spending some time thumbing through the official MacBook Neo repair documentation that Apple published on its support site this week.

Replacements for pretty much any component in the Neo are simpler and involve fewer steps and tools than in the M5 MacBook Air . That includes the battery, which in the MacBook Air is attached to the chassis with multiple screws and adhesive strips but which in the Neo comes out relatively easily after you get some shielding and flex cables out of the way.

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Buying a cheap laptop is easy. You just go to Best Buy or Newegg or Amazon or Walmart or somewhere, you pick the cheapest one (or the most expensive one that fits whatever your budget is), and you buy it. For as little as $200 or $300, you can bring home something new (as in, "new-in-box" not as in, "was released recently") that will power up and boot Windows or ChromeOS.

Buying a decent cheap laptop, or recommending one to someone else who's trying to buy one? That's hard.

For several years I helped maintain Wirecutter's guide to sub-$500 laptops , and keeping that guide useful and up to date was a nightmare. It's not that decent options with good-enough specs, keyboards, and screens didn't exist. But the category is a maze of barely differentiated models, some of them retailer-exclusive. You'd regularly run into laptops that were fine except for a bad screen or a terrible keyboard or miserable battery life—some fatal flaw that couldn't be overlooked.

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NEW YORK CITY—Whether you're talking about the iBook, MacBook, or MacBook Air, Apple's most basic laptops have started at or within $100 of the $1,000 price point for over 20 years . Sure, the company had quietly been testing the waters with a Walmart-exclusive M1 MacBook Air configuration for several years, first at $699 and then at $599. But as far as what Apple would actively advertise and offer on its own site and in its own retail stores, we've never seen anything for substantially below $1,000.

The new MacBook Neo changes that. Apple has experimented with lower-cost products before, most notably with the $329 and $349 iPads and the old $429 iPhone SE. But this is the first time it has used that strategy for the Mac. The Neo starts at $599 for a version with 256GB of storage and no Touch ID sensor, and $699 for a version with Touch ID and 512GB of storage (each also available to educational customers for $100 less).

We had a chance to poke at a MacBook Neo for a while at Apple's " special experience " event in New York this morning, and what I can tell you is that this does feel like an Apple laptop despite the lower starting price. It definitely has some spec sheet shortcomings, even compared to older M3 or M4 MacBook Airs that you still might be able to get at a discount from third-party retailers or Apple's refurbished site —more on that in our full review next week. But it's priced low enough to (1) appeal to people who might not have considered a Mac before, and (2) to make some of its borderline specs feel reasonable, and that's enough to keep it interesting.

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