In summary:
- Apple’s new $599 MacBook Neo features the A18 Pro chip and outperforms mobile processors from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm in single-core benchmarks.
- Macworld notes the MacBook Neo’s strong performance positions it above many budget laptops from Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo.
- Notebook Check concludes the MacBook Neo will shake up the budget laptop segment with its exceptional single-core performance for everyday applications.
Apple’s new $599 MacBook Neo is all the rage in the tech world, and before you roll your eyes and say, “You’re Macworld, of course you’d say that,” really, it’s not just us. Take, for example, the latest report by Notebook Check, whose headline says it all: “MacBook Neo offers more single-core performance than any mobile processor from AMD, Intel or Qualcomm.”
Notebook Check backs up that headline with a collection of Cinebench 2024 single-core benchmark results, and sitting at the top of the chart is your friendly neighborhood MacBook Neo and its A18 Pro chip–it’s actually in third place, but behind Apple’s own M4 and M5 MacBook Air. Below the Neo are budget laptops from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, and others with chips from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm.
Notebook Check compares single-core performance, which is more relevant than multi-core performance on budget laptops. Everyday apps like Safari and Mail are usually single-threaded; thus, single-core performance applies. It’s also the thing that keeps the OS running smoothly, so everything feels faster.
Professional apps (high-end video, audio, and image editors, graphics creation, software development, etc.) that need to run things in the background are multi-threaded, so multi-core performance matters, and these users will opt for higher-priced laptops such as the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro (and maybe some Windows laptops, we don’t know).
Notebook Check’s results are just a sample of what’s available in the budget Windows PC market, which is gigantic, but they conclude, “budget Windows laptops (which usually use less powerful chips than shown in our comparison chart) will be left in the dust in terms of performance.” Overall, Notebook Check finds that “the MacBook Neo could really shake up the budget laptop segment.” So much for its “limited appeal.”
But don’t worry, Window users, you can still enjoy all that power by using Neo as a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop. A recent knowledge base article from Parallels states that Parallels Desktop can indeed run on the MacBook Neo, but “for CPU- or GPU-intensive Windows applications, this computer is not the right choice.” That’s because the Neo has 8GB of RAM, and that’s not ideal for running Windows within Parallels Desktop in macOS. Parallels says a 16GB MacBook Air or MacBook Pro “will give you a significantly better experience with Parallels Desktop.”
But if you’re just going to buy a budget PC anyway, you might be better off.
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.