Will Apple’s MacBook Neo kill budget PC laptops—or save them?

PC vendors always track Apple. Sometimes they copy. But this time around, I wonder if we’ll see PC laptops emulating the Apple MacBook Neo.

Apple’s new budget laptop smashes through all current PC expectations. The news on our side keeps dropping ever-worsening details on memory shortages, price increases, and product delays. And yet, the same day that reviews went live, Asus CEO S.Y. Hsu revealed that “a lot of discussions about how to compete” with the Neo already have happened within the PC industry.

Truthfully, I’m turned around by this development. Apple historically left PC enthusiasts cold. We could be compelled to give the M-series chips their flowers, but we didn’t love the MacBook price points or overall ecosystem. Too expensive, too restrictive. On top of that, there were the years of stingy hardware configurations, an opinion our sister publication Macworld even shared. We on the PC side always had higher performance at lower cost, especially when memory was readily and cheaply available.

But that was then. This is now. And now apparently is an upside-down world where Apple swoops in with plush vibes in a budget laptop. The $599 MacBook Neo—which is just $499 with an education discount—has a lot of appeal, especially for normal PC users.

The specs may not look immediately impressive: The Neo sports a mobile A-series chip (the six-core A18 Pro, first launched in the iPhone 16 Pro), 8GB memory, and smaller SSDs. But as my veteran colleague Roman Loyola’s review notes, the A18 Pro keeps up with its M4 sibling in single-core performance, keeping it snappy during everyday tasks. This laptop then pairs that silicon with a 2408×1506 screen rated at 500 nits, about double the brightness of your average budget PC laptop. Housing everything is an all-aluminum shell, with a total weight of 2.7 pounds.

You can get a cheaper budget PC laptop, sure. You can even get a cheaper budget PC laptop with more RAM and a larger SSD. I easily found several examples of competing products from Lenovo, Asus, and Acer. But you’ll compromise on the CPU age, the build materials (plastic), and the weight. Plus, that extra memory may not give as much of a performance boost as you’d hope in Windows 11.

And that’s only the picture right now. PC vendors have been vocal about their struggles. A recent analyst report even says ”the era of bargain-priced PCs is behind us.” But if they intend to rally, maybe this could give a shot in the arm to affordable Windows computers.

Because Apple is poised to win over users. Out of the blue, I’ve heard interest in the Neo from people who’ve spent decades defaulting to the PC. One particular friend already owns three PC laptops, one newly purchased last fall as a hedge against the RAMpocalypse. But in his words, the Neo is cheap enough for him to try out—especially since it’ll integrate smoothly with his iPhone.

The question is if PC vendors can truly compete. In the fight for memory and shaving costs, Apple has the advantage. I wonder where PC vendors can recalibrate, where they can plump up specs. Until now, it seemed a race to the bottom, with old hardware increasingly propping up the needs of penny-pinched users.

Time will tell how the MacBook Neo shapes the PC industry. At the very least, it’s a bit of unexpected hope and optimism. I definitely did not have it on my 2026 bingo card that Apple would drop the most exciting laptop news I’ve seen in a long while.

In this episode of The Full Nerd

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith first chat with special guest Jacob Freeman of Nvidia about the PC gaming news from GDC—and get treated to a live demo. (It’s a version of Quake III RTX that shows off Advanced Particle VFX, just released in Nvidia RTX Remix.)

Then we have our Macworld colleague Roman Loyola stop by to discuss the Apple Neo, which he reviewed alongside the new M5 Max MacBook Pro. I pepper him with millions of questions. Adam dunks hard on Apple. Will wishes for the inverse of a Neo. Brad is pumped to try a new budget laptop. All is usual in our part of the world.

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Don’t miss out on our other shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries, The Full Nerd: Extra Edition, and Expedition: Handheld through our channel!

And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.

This week’s mixed nerd news

More Apple news than usual crossed my path this week, so I suppose in for a penny, in for a pound. But I still found myself more preoccupied with the discovery that EV batteries withstand increasing global temperatures pretty well, a fake computer made real, and Cooler Master’s fantastical shark PC case coming to the U.S.

Also, scientists pinpointing just how cats land on their feet. Mrow.

• I love the comments: Scientists figure out how cats turn to fall on their feet. Ars Technica readers immediately share stories of all the cats they’ve known who have trouble doing so.

• LOL nope: A bug allowed the saving of Discord credentials (among other sensitive Discord info) in unencrypted local Arc Raider game files, including logs. And Discord wants to trust us with their age verification.

• Nvidia loves the RAM crisis: My man Mike with the hot spicy headlines, but you know, he’s not wrong. (Also, turns out Team Green holds 94 percent of consumer GPU market share. Damn.)

• I’m glad someone said it: A government-sponsored Norwegian consumer advocacy group called out enshittification in a long report, blasting the increasing degradation of technology after purchase. But will the European Union listen and actually take action? Citizens, unite.

• Will loves magnetic switches: A couple of episodes ago, we chatted about different accessories that had crossed our desks. This video gives a deeper look at the mouse Will mentioned.

• What the heck is an M5 super core? I shook my head when I read this one—classic Apple rebranding. (Please, Intel, don’t take a cue from this.)

• Cue the Jaws theme: The Cooler Master Shark X case is finally coming to take a big bite from U.S. wallets. (A massive $5,500 chomp.)

• Just a couple more weeks: Nvidia’s dynamic frame-gen tech was shown at CES, but now we have a date!

• Good news: Modern EV batteries can better withstand climate change (increased temperatures), but degradation on older ones isn’t as bad as I had assumed.

• Project Halo in 2027? At GDC, Microsoft talked more details about its hybrid console/PC gaming machine, but I gotta say: The “artificial barriers” between PC and console games will be much easier to eradicate than those between PC and console gamers.

• Quite the accident: NASA’s 2022 DART mission shifted the orbit of an astroid around the sun. Anyone else wondering what butterfly effect this will have?

• Love makes things real: The Velveteen Rabbit had it right. What we love as children, some of us now make real as adults. (This time, it’s the Lego Computer, recreated and scaled up 10:1 to house a Mac Mini inside.)

Spring is coming soon, so you know what that means? Easter candy. And the inevitable arguments on Discord with TFN regulars about Peeps vs. other abominable Easter candies. (Judge not lest ye be judged, folks.)

Catch you all next week!

Alaina

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.