Apple's all-new affordable MacBook Neo is cheaper than an iPhone 17

Despite its more affordable price tag, MacBook Neo shares a lot of DNA with its costlier cousins. It ships with a durable all-aluminium case in an array of colours — Blush, Indigo, Silver, Citrus — with a 13-inch Liquid Retina display capable of 500-nits of brightness and showcasing 1 billion colours. Apple has added an anti-reflective coating so you can take your lightweight laptop to watch movies, edit photos, or make video calls anywhere.

Under the bonnet, Apple is using the A18 Pro system-on-a-chip that launched with the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. Don't be fooled by the fact that this custom-designed silicon amde its debut inside a smartphone, Apple says its tests show MacBook Neo is 50% speedier faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when crunching through on-device AI tasks – like applying edits to high-resolution effects – compared to the bestselling PCs fuelled by the latest-generation Intel Core Ultra 5 chipset.

The 16-core Neural Engine built into the silicon handles on-device AI tasks, like summarising pages of notes into a few bullet points in the Bear app, or using the Clean Up tool in the Photos app to remove unwanted people from the background of your shots, while ensuring no data is sent from your lightweight laptop to the cloud.

If you're looking for a lightweight laptop to handle schoolwork, emails, web browsing, managing budgets on spreadsheets, streaming YouTube videos and must-binge boxsets, or editing family photos with the latest AI tools, on paper at least, Apple's all-new laptop seems extremely capable.

MacBook Neo is also fanless, so it runs completely silently.

The efficiency of the custom-designed A18 Pro means you'll enjoy 16-hours of battery life with MacBook Neo. That should be more than enough to work all day or power through a long-haul flight on a single charge. When it's time to recharge, you'll need to use one of the two USB-C ports built into the side of the chassis to refuel.

Yes, there's no MagSafe charger on the MacBook Neo — setting it apart from the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, which both ship with this handy cable in the box, which snaps into place using magnets and can detach safely if someone trips over the cable when your laptop is charging.

MacBook Neo does share the same Magic Keyboard as the rest of the MacBook lineup, offering comfortable and precise typing. There's also an expansive glass Multi-Touch trackpad, with support for intuitive gestures, like pinch-to-zoom, for precision control around macOS Tahoe.

While the entry-level £599 model forgoes a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, this useful feature makes an appearance on the £699 MacBook Neo with 512GB storage. With a quick tap, Touch ID lets you log in without typing a password, unlocks secure apps – like banking, and authenticates payments via Apple Pay when shopping online.

MacBook Neo boasts a 3.5mm headphone port for wired audio and Wi-Fi 6E for speedy wireless internet, and Bluetooth 6 for reliable connections for peripherals, like wireless mice, and accessories, like AirPods Pro 3.

There's no notch in the border around the Liquid Glass display – another differentiator between the MacBook Neo and the £1,099 MacBook Air that launched just a few days before the Neo arrived on the scene. Inside the bezel, there's a 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual-microphones designed to make your video calls look and sound great. Apple has equipped the MacBook Neo with dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio.

MacBook Neo is the most affordable laptop ever created by Apple. The US firm says it provides "an unprecedented combination of quality and value".

Preorders are available now, with the first laptops set to be delivered to early-adopters on March 11. That's also when you'll be able to get your hands on the MacBook Neo at your nearest Apple Store, too.

Discussing the new addition to the lineup, Apple Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, said: "We’re incredibly excited to introduce MacBook Neo, which delivers the magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price. Built from the ground up to be more affordable for even more people, MacBook Neo is a laptop only Apple could create.

"It features a durable aluminium design in four beautiful colours; a brilliant Liquid Retina display; Apple silicon-powered performance; all-day battery life; a high-quality camera, mics, and speakers; a Magic Keyboard and Multi-Touch trackpad; and the intuitive and powerful features of macOS. There is simply no other laptop like it."