I reviewed the MacBook Neo way back in March, and even then I knew there was very little chance that I'd be giving our Laptop of the Year award to any other device at the TechRadar Product of the Year 2026 Awards.
It's not necessarily the best choice for everyone — many far more powerful laptops have been released this year, and if you want to play PC games on your laptop don't even think of buying the Neo — but what Apple did with the MacBook Neo is pretty incredible, and it set the tone for a lot of other laptops that have come out this year.
Apple has always been seen as a premium brand, offering expensive devices that (usually, but not always) justify their price tags with superior build quality, and the kind of lifespans that owners of Windows laptops, who feel they have to upgrade every five years, can only dream of.
With the MacBook Neo, however, Apple has produced a (relatively) cheap laptop that manages to keep a lot of what we love about Apple's more expensive MacBooks, while making it affordable for more people.
The timing couldn't have been better, as a global cost-of-living crisis has meant that more people are struggling to afford day-to-day essentials, let alone 'luxury' purchases like laptops. At a time when a lot tech is also increasing in price because of the RAM crisis, it was very welcome to see a company like Apple release a relatively inexpensive new device.
Before the Neo's announcement, rumors had been swirling that Apple was planning on announcing a cheaper MacBook, but I don't think any of us were expecting the earthquake of its $599 / £599 / AU$1,049 starting price.
I say 'earthquake' because not only was it a lot cheaper than expected, it changed the landscape of the laptop market, shaking Apple's competitors, and leaving them scrambling to come up with a response.
And respond they did, with the likes of Dell and Acer releasing laptops at a similar price point that were explicitly pitched as competitors to the MacBook Neo when I discussed them with the makers.
A victim of its own success?
The fact that the MacBook Neo has had such an influence on the laptop market is one of the key reasons why I've picked it as TechRadar's Laptop of the Year. The likes of the Dell XPS 13 (2026) and Acer Swift Air 14 have made affordable Windows 11 laptops worth buying again, and the higher price of the new Googlebook laptops have a more difficult time justifying their price tags when the MacBook Neo, and the laptops it inspired, offer such good value.
In fact, you could almost argue that the MacBook Neo proved a bit too successful in inspiring its competitors, especially given that, a few months after launch, Apple increased the price of the MacBook Neo by $100 / £100. Not only did this make the MacBook Neo less groundbreaking value (and less of an 'instant recommendation' when people asked me which laptop they should buy), but its competitors seem to have mostly held steady with their initial pricing.
All of a sudden, Apple appeared to have inspired its competitors to make rival products that were cheaper than the MacBook Neo. Whoops.
Despite that price bump, the MacBook Neo remains an excellent laptop that continues to offer plenty of value. If you're looking for a dependable, well-built laptop for day-to-day tasks that doesn't cost a fortune, it's still one of the best laptops you can buy — and it remains the cheapest way to get into the Mac ecosystem.
The MacBook Neo proved that, at a time when hardware prices appear to be rising inexorably, it's still possible to make an impressive, affordable device, without making too many sacrifices — and that's exactly what we need in 2026.
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