Perhaps one of Apple's most important releases in some time.

Rumours of Apple working on a 'low-cost MacBook' had been rife for a while, but the brand's MacBook Neo still launched to great fanfare last month for a more affordable price than expected. It's a Mac that runs an iPhone chip, comes with a colourful metal chassis, a solid 13-inch screen and great battery life, and we've finally seen the top end 512GB model drop in the mainstream for the first time. Granted, it's a small discount at £649 from Amazon (the 256GB is also down to £549), but still important nonetheless. The deal is available on the silver model in 512GB flavour, although opt for the 256GB, and you can get some of the other colours for the reduced price.

It's the guts of the MacBook Neo that make it such an important machine, with the A18 Pro chip inside you'll find in the iPhone 16 Pro. Single core performance, which matters for the kind of productivity tasks this laptop is likely to undertake, is as strong as Apple's M-series silicon, making this a zippy customer for general use, although multi-threaded performance is about on par with the older M1 chip - perhaps this SoC's closest rival of sorts. It's a six core chip alongside a five core GPU that's surprisingly zippy for the price tag. The only thing to note is that the A18 Pro can thermal throttle under heavy, intensive loads if you push it too hard - whether Apple recommends this is a different kettle of fish, but it is something that a thermal pad over the entire logic board can solve to help the entire bottom case dissipate heat away in the absence of fans.

Alongside this comes 8GB of RAM (standard across both models) and 512GB of storage for this top-end model. Drop down to the base, and you'll lose Touch ID and half the capacity, but it is £100 less at the end of the day. 8GB of RAM is one of the big complaints for the MacBook Neo, especially as Apple has moved to a 16GB base on its other MacBooks. Although, if the A18 Pro is like more recent M-series silicon, then it can manage with 8GB of unified memory in a better way than you may expect. This can help provide some headroom for intense multi-tasking and creative tasks such as photo or video ediitng at a push.

Otherwise, it's a brand-new and shiny £549-£649 MacBook in 2026 - with full-fat macOS Tahoe, a comfortable keyboard (that isn't unfortunately backlit), a mechanical trackpad rather than force-touch, a solid 13-inch 2408x1506 IPS Liquid Retina screen - and it comes in funky colours! It really feels like Apple has taken aim at the refurb market of M1 MacBooks with the MacBook Neo, providing a machine with comparable performance and similar features that's brand new and will be supported for longer.

Ports wise, you don't get MagSafe, and it's only two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. Neither of the USB-Cs are Thunderbolt-capable, and one of them runs at USB 2.0 speeds (more for charging than connecting storage or to an external screen), and unfortunately with this UK model, there isn't a charging brick in the box as I can tell. It's fine for most folks, I'm sure, and it is possible to get affordable USB-C hubs to expand your ports and fast external storage if you're running low at any point

Apple may have cut some corners with the MacBook Neo to make it this price (a feat in itself with the RAM crisis going on), but I'd wager it's the right ones they've cut to get it down to this price. Nonetheless, having such a new laptop get its first mainstream discount is an important milestone.