Apple’s Budget MacBook Neo is Cheaper than its Cheapest iPhone

By Ben McKimm - News

Published: 5 Mar 2026

ShareCopy Link0

Table of contents

Table of contents

• Design and Portability
• Display and Visual Experience
• Performance
• Battery Life and Connectivity
• Price and Availability

Readtime: 6 min

Every product is carefully selected by our editors and experts. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more. For more information on how we test products, click here.

• Apple announces the new MacBook Neo starting at just A$899.
• It features the powerful A18 Pro chip and 16 hours of battery life.
• The 13-inch Liquid Retina display supports one billion vibrant colours.
• Four aluminium finishes include Blush, Indigo, Silver, and Citrus.
• Pre-orders open today with official Australian availability on March 11.

Days after launching its AUD$999 iPhone 17e, Apple has announced a new budget-friendly MacBook that’s even cheaper than its cheapest iPhone. Called the MacBook Neo, it’s priced from AUD$899 (AUD$749 for Education), and pre-orders start today (March 5, 2026), with in-store purchases available from March 11, 2026. Here’s everything you need to know about it.

Design and Portability

You won’t mistake this for a cheaper MacBook, with the same durable aluminium enclosure with soft, rounded corners as the more expensive MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Impressively, the MacBook Neo weighs the same as a MacBook Air (13-inch) at 1.23 kg (2.7 pounds), and while it is technically a little thicker than the Air (0.5 inches), it has a smaller overall footprint, making it easy to slip into a handbag or backpack.

The main way to tell the MacBook Neo apart from the rest of the line-up at a distance is its fun, lifestyle aesthetic, with four highly saturated colours: Blush (pink), Indigo, Silver, and the new Citrus (yellow). These colours extend to lighter shades on the Magic Keyboard, which isn’t backlit. You can pair the colour of your MacBook Neo with a coordinated macOS wallpaper as well.

Display and Visual Experience

One of the most impressive things about the MacBook Neo is how the brand has managed to squeeze its Liquid Retina display into such a budget-friendly device.

It might not match up to the nearly $1,000 more expensive MacBook Air in 13-inch form, with a 2408 x 1506 (219 ppi) resolution, compared to the Air’s 2560 x 1664 (224 ppi). Nor can it muster Wide Colour (P3) accuracy or True Tone, settling for the standard sRGB colour gamut. However, this is a concern only for those who regularly work with images and video.

More important is brightness, and it offers the same 500 nits as the more expensive MacBook Air. You also get an anti-reflective coating for a comfortable viewing experience in difficult lighting conditions. You’d have to step up to the even more expensive MacBook Pro to get up to 1,600 nits peak brightness for HDR content and 1,000 nits for SDR content.

Performance

The MacBook Neo uses the A18 Pro (6-core CPU, 5-core GPU) chip that was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro. Don’t let the smartphone chip fool you, as Apple claims it’s more than capable of handling daily workflows, running up to 50% faster for web browsing than the bestselling PC in its price class that uses an Intel Core Ultra 5. This also uses hardware-accelerated ray tracing, so it can easily handle light gaming and basic creative hobbies like photo editing in Photoshop.

We know that AI will become part of every student’s workflow, so the 16-core Neural Engine has been chosen to power on-device Apple Intelligence tasks, making it up to 3x faster for AI workloads than its PC rivals.

The MacBook Neo has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in the base $899 form. However, you can pay to upgrade to 512 GB of storage. Unfortunately, the RAM is strictly locked at 8GB, which is a crucial detail for multitaskers to keep in mind. Frankly, this is the main reason someone would upgrade to the MacBook Air: it starts at 16GB of RAM and can be configured up to 32GB.

Battery Life and Connectivity

The MacBook Neo delivers up to 16 hours of video streaming (or 11 hours of wireless web browsing) from its 36.5-watt-hour battery. That’s down from the battery life offered by the new MacBook Air (M5), but it is likely more than enough for the device’s target market.

Because the MacBook Neo charges exclusively via USB-C (a 20W adapter is included in the box) and lacks Apple’s magnetic MagSafe charger, there’s only one additional port available while charging. That might be an issue for those who plug in multiple devices at a time, such as wired mice, keyboards, and more. You’ll also only be able to plug into one external display (supports 4K). Still, it’s nothing that an adaptor can’t fix.

The MacBook Air took a leap forward with its 12MP Centre Stage front camera for video calls, but the MacBook Neo takes a step backward in that regard, with a Standard 1080p FaceTime HD. You’ll also find the standard speaker system a little lacklustre, with dual speakers and dual mics, compared to the four-speaker immersive sound and three-mic array in the MacBook Air. If you regularly use video calls, consider the Air.

Finally, the MacBook Neo is equipped with the slightly outdated Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6, where other MacBooks now feature Wi-Fi 7 thanks to the brand’s N1 chip.

Price and Availability

The MacBook Neo starts at a highly approachable AUD$899, officially making it Apple’s most affordable laptop ever. You can double the Neo’s storage to 512GB, which crucially also adds the Touch ID fingerprint sensor to the keyboard, for AUD$1,099.

Education pricing drops the Neo even further to AUD$749, which is a big win for university students on a budget.

Pre-orders for both the MacBook Neo and the new M5 MacBook Air open today, March 5, before the laptops officially land in Apple Store locations on Wednesday, March 11.