How cheap is a cheap MacBook, really?

There’s probably not long to go now. Based on Apple’s looming “global experience” on March 4, dwindling stock of the M1 MacBook Air, and a near-universal consensus among pundits and leakers, the much-anticipated cheap MacBook will be with us in the next week or two. But we still don’t know the answer to the key question.

Exactly how cheap are we talking about?

Because here’s the thing: As a general rule, Apple doesn’t do cheap. It prefers to focus on the premium end of the market where the margins are higher, and it can get more mileage out of its luxury brand. Conversely, dabbling in the budget market risks tarnishing that brand: if everyone can afford an iPhone, owning an iPhone stops being a status symbol.

From the iPhone 5c and Apple Watch SE to the AirPods 4 and Mac mini, fans have often got excited about the imminent launch of a “cheap” Apple product, then been disappointed when it turns out to sit roughly on the border of budget and solidly affordable mid-market. They’re (mostly) good products perfectly capable of delivering value for money. But that isn’t quite the same as being out-and-out cheap.

Indeed, despite rising costs of living in the U.S. and several major international markets, Apple appears less inclined than ever to cater to buyers on a strict budget. This time last year, it released the iPhone 16e, which was certainly more affordable than its \siblings but cost $170 more than the iPhone SE it nominally replaced. The new “e” phone felt like a signal that Apple no longer wished to participate (or pretend to participate) in the budget smartphone market. And the iPhone 17e, which we expect to launch in a matter of days as well, is unlikely to reverse that decision.

So what would be a reasonable asking price for a MacBook with an A19 iPhone chip? For comparison purposes, let’s consider the rest of Apple’s current range. At the top, the MacBook Pro starts at $1,599 for the 14-inch model with an M5 chip, while the MacBook Air starts at $999 for the 13-inch model with an M4 chip. Even if the cheap MacBook has the same 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM as those models (which isn’t guaranteed), it’ll cost less than both of those, so we can start subtracting from a thousand.

At the other end, the most interesting comparator is the M1 MacBook Air. Apple once sold this machine for $999 long past its prime, and it continued to be sold by Walmart until very recently. In 2024, Walmart sold the M1 Air for $699, but the price fell over the months to $599, $549 and finally all the way down to $499 on Cyber Monday last year, so this gives us a floor.

Now that we’ve established that cheap is between $499 and $999, let’s drill down deeper. The budget MacBook will be targeted at customers who need to do light work on the go, and that’s veering into iPad territory. The entry-level and mini versions of the iPad don’t quite fit that target audience, but the iPad Air is about right. That starts at $599. Chuck in the Magic Keyboard, and we’re up to $868. I’d expect our MacBook’s price tag to sit somewhere between those two numbers, hopefully closer to the lower end.

And this is more or less where pundits have ended up. Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg, says the budget MacBook will cost “well under $1,000.” Others have more ambitiously claimed it could start as low as $599 to compete in the popular Chromebook market, and maybe Apple will manage this by making heavy compromises on the specs and feature set. But I’d be surprised by that, given how recently Apple fans were expected to part with the same amount for a five-year-old MacBook Air. Based on our experience with the transition from the iPhone SE 3 to the iPhone S16e, I’d expect the A19 Pro MacBook to cost somewhere between $699 and $799, with a discount of $50 or $100 for education buyers.

Of course, there are plenty of customers out there who’d be delighted if Apple went lower. Our colleagues at PCWorld have an entire article recommending laptops under $500, and this includes one pick under $300 and another under $200. If Apple truly wanted to smash the ultra-budget Chromebook market, it would be targeting numbers like that. But it won’t. And the sooner we accept this, the better.

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

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