Apple launched it's cheapest MacBooks yet

On 4 March 2026, Apple announced the MacBook Neo, starting at £599. That is not a sale price. That is the actual price. For a MacBook.

What exactly is it?

Think of it as an iPhone in laptop form. The MacBook Neo runs on the A18 Pro chip, the same family powering Apple's latest iPhones. It is fast. Noticeably fast.

Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling Windows laptop with an Intel Core i5 chip. For AI tasks such as editing photos, cleaning up images, or summarising notes, it is up to 3x faster.

You get a 13-inch Liquid Retina display. 16 hours of battery life. A 1080p camera. It comes in four colours: blush, indigo, silver, and citrus. It weighs 2.7 pounds. And it runs completely silent. No fan. No noise. No heat.

Individuals

For years, the choice was simple: you either spent £1,000 or more on a MacBook, or you settled for a cheaper one. The MacBook Neo closes that gap. £599 gets you Apple's aluminium build, a proper Retina screen, and battery life that actually lasts all day. Students pay £499.

Creatives

Photo editing, Canva, Final Cut, and Premiere. The Neo runs them all. Apple confirms it is up to 2x faster than competing Windows laptops for photo editing tasks. This is not a stripped-down machine for light work. The A18 Pro has a 5-core GPU built in. That matters for anyone working with graphics, video, or design.

It will not replace a MacBook Pro for professional-grade video production. But for the photographer, the freelance designer, the content creator who does not need a £2,000 machine, this is the one.

Businesses

Equipping a team of 10 with MacBooks used to cost £15,000 before you even sat down. Now you are looking at £5,990. That is a real difference for small businesses, startups, and growing teams, and because it runs macOS Tahoe with full Apple Intelligence, your team gets built-in AI tools that summarise emails, rewrite documents, and clean up meeting notes, without paying extra for software.

What it does not do

The Neo has limited ports. You will need dongles for external monitors or USB-A devices. It is not built for heavy video editing, 3D rendering, or running demanding software all day. For that, you need the standard MacBook Air or Pro.

And if you run multiple demanding apps at once, you might feel the limits of the base model.

What reviewers actually think

Engadget's Devindra Hardawar put it plainly after handling the device: it does not look or feel like a budget machine. The colourful aluminium body looks, in his words, "even more attractive than the MacBook Air and Pro." He held it next to a similarly priced HP laptop. The difference, he said, was not subtle.

Mark Ellis, a UK-based Apple reviewer who got hands-on time at Apple's London event, was blunter: build quality versus Windows alternatives is "simply unmatched." He said his parents would buy one immediately.

That is the consensus so far. At this price, nothing else looks or feels like this.

This is where it gets important. The MacBook Neo runs on the A18 Pro chip, the same chip inside the iPhone 16 Pro. That is powerful for a phone. For a laptop, it is capable but not without limits.

MacRumors was direct about it: it performs like an iPhone. It is not on par with Apple's M-series MacBooks. It has half the memory bandwidth of the MacBook Air.

Gizmodo tested it at the launch event and said video editing apps like Final Cut Pro may not run nearly as well as on a higher-end Mac. Their verdict: the Neo is best for browsing, streaming, documents, and light creative work.

9to5Mac framed it fairly: "good enough specs for what the vast majority of people need a computer for."

So be honest with yourself. If your day is emails, documents, video calls, Canva, and Spotify, this machine handles it all without breaking a sweat. If you edit 4K video or run complex software all day, you'll see its limits.