Name: Macbook Neo Impressions: Reincarnated!
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T23:39:23.000Z
Duration: 8 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

All right, so Apple is doing a week of new release stuff and it's all headlined by what I saw today, which is the newest, cheapest entry to the MacBook lineup.

We've never heard that word from Apple before.

I thought when it was leaked it was maybe just a code name.

I would have bet it's just called the MacBook.

It is a 13 inch laptop powered by the A18 Pro chip.

8 gigs of RAM, 256 gigs of starting storage, and

it is a super thin and decently light all aluminum laptop.

2 USB type C ports on the left hand side, not Thunderbolt, there's a headphone jack on the left as well.

And then there's some side firing stereo speakers.

And it comes in four indigo, blush, citrus and silver.

They all have this sort of a whitish keyboard that is kind of tinted to match the color of the laptop in person.

Maybe the lighting is terrible in here, but

it was kind of hard to tell when looking at a single laptop.

But you can when there's some next to each other.

See that the keyboards are tinted and there's a 1080p webcam up at the top hidden in that bezel.

And most importantly, the starting price, $599.

This is now, you know, the cheapest entry level Mac laptop.

It's the same price as a Mac mini, which has actually been one of the best deals in tech for a little bit now.

And I think this one's also shaping up to be pretty good value.

Now the X factor is how will the A18 Pro chip perform inside a computer?

Now, in case you don't remember, the A18 Pro is the same chip that was in the iPhone 16 Pros last year, but

This is a five core GPU version instead of six core.

But I think in general there's a lot of tasks that regular people do on regular computers that clearly don't require a ton of power.

Web browsing, emailing, shopping, spreadsheet type of stuff, right?

And before I've done any testing, just messing around on this thing for a few minutes, it seems like it would be totally fine for that.

I would not expect to edit videos or do anything really intensive on this thing.

But I also wouldn't be surprised if it could handle some light photo editing, some multitasking and Just, you know, generally be a solid computer.

Think of it like a Chromebook, but the Apple one, it's like the Safari book.

This is like, it's a super basic computer.

If you're looking at this and thinking, I wonder if this has enough RAM for what I'm trying to do, this probably already isn't for you.

This isn't the computer you should be looking at.

If you're thinking, mmm, I wonder why they're, you know, USB type C ports and not Thunderbolt.

You're watching an MKBHD video on the day that it was uploaded because you're subscribed to a Tech channel on YouTube.

This probably isn't the computer for you.

Now I'm thinking the battery life could be interesting.

Obviously it's the same chip as an iPhone, but

with a chassis and the battery size of a laptop.

And I think they're quoting 16 hours right now, which doesn't mean much to me except that they also quote MacBook Air at 18 hours, so it should be in the same ballpark.

Well, I think the obvious answer is just to have something much more attainable available.

Up until now the cheapest laptop available was the MacBook Air.

And that just got a price bump up with the M5.

But in my limited hands on time, it doesn't feel cheap.

Matter of fact, one of the advantages here is it's going to probably be the best built laptop at this price.

With this all metal body, this nice hinge weight, everything still feels very much like the other more premium MacBooks.

There's also a couple smaller things I noticed too.

Like the base version with 256gigs doesn't have touch ID.

So you spend another hundred bucks and you get the 512 gigs of storage and touch ID.

The trackpad also is actually not a haptic trackpad like the rest of the MacBooks.

It's a real moving, clicking, old school trackpad I guess.

And then the display, it's okay, it's not amazing.

The rooms we're in are not very bright, but

this maxes out at 500 nits and it's a little higher than 1440p resolution at 60Hz.

And I also actually found myself thinking maybe it would be a little bit lighter since it's on the small side, but

it's still all metal and spec for spec, it looks like it's the same weight as a slightly bigger MacBook Air.

not just college students, I think high school and even younger, especially where Chromebooks have been killing it for years.

Chromebooks have been cheaper and have been just dominating in education.

And I think Apple wanted a piece of that pie.

Now, this isn't Chromebook cheap, but it is a lot closer than the $1,100 MacBook Air is.

And with the student discount, if you look on their site, this is also now a $499 laptop.

So it's a little more appealing and it just plays into the classic Apple thing, like, oh, we offer something in the same category.

Would you rather get the thin and light LA from Acer or the one from Apple?

Well, the one from Apple works well with the iPhone you have.

And you know, up until now a lot of students I've seen were trying to undercut a MacBook Air with either going cheaper, refurbished, or with an iPad.

Thing about the iPad is it's actually not that much cheaper.

Now if you go with the cheapest base iPad, that's 329, but

then the keyboard accessory that they make for it costs $250 more dollars, so.

So before you even get a pencil, you're already at just about 600 bucks.

So now this looks like a much better value to actually get a Mac.

Do you Remember the original 12 inch MacBook?

Some of you are younger, you might actually not remember this from about 10 years ago.

But Apple tried to make before Apple silicon, a 12 inch MacBook.

And that was supposed to be an even thinner and lighter and smaller laptop than the MacBook Air.