this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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That price still sounds like a ripoff for what you apparently get. Such is Apple.
Not too sure on that. In single-thread cinebench it beats high-end desktop CPUs from AMD and Intel. Now the Ryzen 9950X3D will absolutely DEMOLISH it in anything that can use all of its threads, but it literally lost in single-thread to Apple's phone SoC. And that CPU costs the same as the entire Macbook Neo.
You can spend 3k on a gaming laptop with a Core Ultra 9 288V right now that is in every other way better performing than the Macbook Neo, but still loses heavily in single thread performance.
Now I'm not saying this makes it the best deal ever, it's literally just one metric I'm talking about, but for the average user, single thread performance means the computer is more responsive overall, and a lot of applications aren't optimized to make proper use of 6 threads, let alone 16 or 32, so it might feel snappier than a significantly more expensive laptop from another manufacturer, especially if it's running Windows.
Shilling much lately?
It does seem still very impressive against other top laptop CPUs.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Ryzen-AI-9-HX-PRO-375-vs-Ultra-X9-388H-vs-A18-Pro_19565_20016_18006.247596.0.html
Although I heard from Jeff Geerling's review that the neo often noticably throttles after a few seconds.
It also has pretty terrible IO.
I think the biggest attraction is the build quality, screen, etc. Most cheap laptops seem to cheap out on those a lot in my experience, and Apple did not. If you're not stressing the CPU or GPU, it'll still feel almost as high quality as any other MacBook.
For reference