MacBook Neo Review: This Can't Be Real

Hi, my name is Faruk and this is Apple's 599 499 if you're into education laptop MacBook Neo. In the end of this video, two things are going to happen. One, you're going to fall in love with Neo. And two, you're going to want to buy one even if you don't need one. [music] And here it is. MacBook Neo comes in this nicely designed box. Inside the box, we're greeted with MacBook Neo with an adorable hello sign on its tab. Then some papers, still no stickers, [music] 1.5 m USBC charge cable, and 20 watt USBC power adapter. MacBook Neo comes in four beautiful colors, silver, blush, citrus, [music] and this one, indigo. This laptop feels like any other MacBook. In fact, due to its fun colors, it looks even more alive. On the left side, it has a USBC 3 port for charging display and other things, which is the one close to the edge and a USBC 2 port for charging and other things. Neo also has a headphone jack, so clearly they're not forcing you to buy wireless headphones. And these sidefiring speakers sound surprisingly well. Just like the other Macs I've been reviewing lately, as soon as you open the lid, MacBook Neo turns on. It has 13-in LED [music] screen that can go up to 500 nits brightness. The color of the keys go with the color of [music] the laptop and the trackpad is a nice size. As is tradition, you know, we're not going to spare this guy. Let's look at the benchmarks. When we look at Geekbench CPU scores, MacBook Neo performs better than iPhone 16 Pro Max. But when we switch to GPU scores, MacBook Neo is behind iPhone 16 Pro Max. Now, let's look at Cinebench. In Cinebench, it didn't allow me to do the GPU test for some reason. So, we have a couple of CPU tests. And as expected, MacBook Neo gets the lowest score. And now, disk speed. And yes, MacBook Neo cannot keep up with the other MacBooks when it comes to disk speed as well. Now, let's talk about what's in this device because this thing has an A18 Pro chip that you may know and love from iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, but this one is lacking one GPU core compared to iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max and it has an 8 GB unified memory. Now, when it comes to storage, you get two options. 256 GB which comes without a Touch ID and then 512 GB which comes with Touch ID and that is $100 more expensive. The display is 13in LED back lit and the brightness goes up to 500. But when we go to the display settings here that we do not have true tone display which is something I turn off immediately anyway so it didn't bother me. And when it comes to ports, we have a USBC 3 port for charging and display or like whatever you want to connect. And then the port next to it is USBC 2. And if you connect things in the wrong spot, it will warn you on the screen. But of course, if you bring in your Thunderbolt, when you plug it in, as you can see, it's telling us that this accessory is not compatible. The keyboard is really nice. Typing on this is a lot of fun. is just like there's nothing surprising about it. Everything is super cool and the keyboard is not back lit and as you can see it's blue on dark blue so it gets a little tricky to see. So I wish it was back lit but I understand why it's not backlit but then maybe I don't know a little bit more contrast on the keys could have been nice because when it's when you're in a low light situation it becomes difficult to see. But this trackpad is a multi-touch trackpad. So it doesn't work with the haptic feedback. This is actually a button and you're clicking it in, but it still supports the gestures and it is fine. The the click is not really firm. It's actually not bad. Of course, just like MacBook Air, this thing doesn't have a fan. But let me show you what it can do. Let's start here. Let's start browsing the web a little bit. Maybe we go and I don't know, watch a YouTube video right here. Oh, look. That's me. So, I want to see what happens if we go to By the way, I released this. I released four videos yesterday. And in the XDR unboxing video, when it comes to the speaker test, I made a mistake. I left the noise cancellation on on my Final Cut. So, what you're hearing in that mo uh point is getting a little cut out. So, I uploaded another version. There's an unlisted video if you want to check out the regular uh video. Now, let's go here. Let's take a look at this. Everything seems super fluid and nice. I like it, right? It's not bad. Let's go back. Let's check out my notes. Wonderful. Everything is very fluid. I hope you can see that. Yeah. And let's go here. Oh, look at that. It's logic. Let's hit that. It's playing. I hope I'm not gonna get Let's turn it down a little bit because when I upload the XDR, I immediately got flagged because I showed uh Max Mad Max a little bit. This is playing really nicely. Everything's going super well. Uh let's move. Oh, let's listen to a song from my friend Jonathan. Let's hear the speakers a little bit. [singing and music] The speakers are seriously impressive. Even though they're super tiny and here, they sound really good. Especially with stereo stuff, the spatial sound. It sounds really good. Anyway, let's move on. Oh, look at that. It's my numbers where I keep track of what's going on with the iPhones. This is the MAC uh comparison chart I have. Perfect. That seems like that's doing really well. Let's move. Oh, a movie. Let's sit that and then let's start watching it. The trailer. Let's turn that down. I don't want to get into trouble again. Oh, very nice. Also, the screen is really nice. Look at that. Playing just like that. Anyway, let's get out of that. Let's go here. Oh, look. Lightroom. Oh, let's select this photo. Maybe it's like edit edit a little bit. Let's go here. Let's do some Oh, yeah. I like this. I like this. Very nice. The quickest editing I've ever did. Let's remove the clarity a little bit. Add a little bit dehaze. Looking good. Oh, look. Image playground. Let's create an image. Waterfall. Why not? There you go. We got it. The little guy is doing really well. That's That's not bad. I I cannot complain for $5.99. Oh, what is that? That's my final cut project. That is the M5 Max MacBook Pro video that I posted. I wonder if it plays nicely. I know. Oh, I have a missing plugin. Ah, no, I have a missing image. Okay, that makes sense. But the thing is, yes, it worked super fluid. This is 4K project, by the way. Multicam project. There are a lot of stuff happening in this uh video and it is just dealing with that like crazy. But of course, I had to render this just like how we did stuff back in the day to be able to view it like this fluid. you have to render the footage. And of course that took a little while. Uh let's connect this. This is something I wanted to do. Let's connect this here because I believe most of the time we're going to need an external drive because you cannot get anything above 512. As you can see, it is telling me that I I was connected to the wrong port. So I'm going to connect to the other one. Let's go here. Let's go to my Final Cut projects and then studio display. This is like a 152 gigabyte project. Let's open that up. Let's go here. The project is here. Let's find that part. We can look down. This is not rendered. And as you can see, it is still playing fine. But every once in a while, audio does something weird between clips. Now, the second thing I want to do, I don't know if you heard that. So, you know, Oh, look. It's the 1080p webcam. Let's start recording something. Hi. How's it going? This is the camera. It doesn't support desk view, but this is the webcam this thing has. It's 1080p. I hope it is looking good. Looks really sharpened to me, but you know, for video and FaceTiming, it is it is what it is. Let's stop that. Nicely done. Let's export that as 1080p to No. Yeah. Let's post that on my desktop. Let's see how long that takes. Booyah. We're done. Of course, we're not done here. Let's play some games. Why not? I'm enjoying this video a lot, by the way, because I knew there was going to be people complaining about, "Oh, 8 gigabyte RAM. That's not going to run anything together." All of this we're swiping one after the other. Let's go here. I like to clean. Very nice. Look at that. Look at Look how fluid this is. I also tried playing Cyberpunk a little bit. I set every possible setting to the lowest thing possible and yeah, I was able to play a little bit. Technically, it looks like I'm playing. Technically things are happening but I don't think you can enjoy the game a lot like this. However, does it work? It kind of works. So I think I had a Chromebook and I don't think I could have done any of this with the Chromebook. I think this device is going to be a game changer. So yeah, this is my MacBook Neo review and I hope you enjoyed it because I just love this video so much. This was one of the products that I was looking forward to make a video and show it to you and now here we are. Thank you so much for watching. Please let me know what you think about MacBook Neo in the comment section below. And until I see you the next time, take really good care of yourselves and host Shakalen.