The MacBook Neo has taken the world by storm, offering premium Mac quality that exceeds its price point. But the Neo isn’t without its shortcomings, most notably its SSD. Not only are its 256GB and 512GB capacities not enough for a lot of users, but it’s also incredibly slow compared to other Macs. But if you’re handy with a soldering iron, you might be able to fix that problem.
In his latest video, YouTuber dosdude1 was able to upgrade a MacBook Neo with a 1TB NAND NVMe SSD that’s both more spacious and faster than the one Apple offers. In a post on X, dosdude1 wrote, “It ended up working without a hitch!” The module they bought is “commonly used” in the iPhone 16 Pro, though the module was “a good 35% of the cost” of the MacBook Neo. (In case you don’t want to do the math, that’s $210 if we’re talking about a $599 Neo.)
In case you’re gung-ho to do this on your own MacBook Neo, you’d better be prepared, because it’s not as simple as popping out RAM sticks and popping in new ones. It involves disassembling the MacBook Neo, preparing the new SSD for soldering, removing the Neo’s existing drive, preparing the new SSD for soldering, soldering it in, and testing for integrity. I generalized for the sake of this article, but it’s quite complex, though doable.
If you’re wondering if a similar hack can be done for the MacBook Neo’s memory, it can’t. The RAM is not a separate component like the SSD, so you can’t just use an off-the-shelf memory module due to Apple’s proprietary chips. The memory part of the main chip, along with the CPU and GPU, so you basically need to replace the Neo’s A18 Pro chip with an A19 Pro, which has 12GB of RAM. But if you wait a little while, it might just be on the way.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor, Macworld
Roman is a Macworld Senior Editor with over 30 years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the Mac and other products in the Apple ecosystem. He is also the host of the Macworld Podcast. His career started at MacUser, where he received Apple certification as a repair technician (when Apple did that kind of thing). He's also worked for MacAddict, MacLife, and TechTV.