MacBook Neo Impressions

I went to a local mall yesterday and happened to chance upon a couple of MacBook Neos on display at our local (monopolistic) Apple retailer¹, and spent a half hour playing with them.

The display is… fine? With their strategic placement away from the other laptops on display, side-by-side comparison was impossible, but I didn’t find it bad or dim. The keyboard also felt OK, although I am wary of white keyboards, as they tend to get dirty and look bad over time. The trackpad was… also fine. I don’t press to click, so comparing the physical click with the taptic engine doesn’t make sense to me.

However, the bezels were a bit thicker than I am used to (hence noticeable) and I do think that the overall size could be smaller (even if that would be clearly against mainstream taste). It’s not something I would choose for a cheap travel laptop (especially considering I have the Minibook X), but volume-wise, and in “backpack scale”, it’s not that far off from the 13” MacBook Air if you squint.

Of course it was Tahoe, with Liquid Glass. The less said about that horrid mess the better.

To my surprise, it ran this site’s 3D visualization quite snappily, which is no small feat (most PC laptops struggle with it, regardless of what browser and GPU they have). And although I didn’t have the chance to run any benchmarks, RAM usage in Activity Monitor was pretty much OK after launching a gaggle of Apple apps, which wasn’t surprising (their software load doesn’t include any of the Electron bloat everyone has to deal with to some degree).

In general, I think it makes a killer Chromebook/PC laptop replacement for school, and although I expect the A18 to not be a powerhouse, it felt quite snappy, even with multiple apps open. And I’m sure Apple went to some pains to position it where it wouldn’t threaten either the Air or the iPad Pro.

I’d buy one in a flash if it was smaller (well, if I had money to spare), but at least the A18 performance makes me optimistic for whatever they decide to put into the next iPad mini, since my 5th generation one is in desperate need of an upgrade.