is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
Here is the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new entry-level Mac laptop. Its colorful chassis options easily set it apart from current MacBook Air and Pro models. But the biggest difference is that inside the Neo is an A18 Pro iPhone chip instead of an M-series processor Apple typically uses in its laptops and recent desktops.
The first thing you notice, touching the device, is obviously the colors. They’re not quite as vibrant as the orange iPhone 17 Pro, but the blush and citrus colors (which are more like chartreuse-ish and purple-ish) do look pretty nice. Apple says the keyboards are color-matched, but the effect is pretty subtle, and was a bit hard to see under the harsh lights of Apple’s hands-on area.
The Neo is the same weight as the latest MacBook Air, but it carries the weight very differently. The Neo feels denser, more like a slab of metal somehow. In a short test, the keyboard felt about like an Air keyboard, but the touchpad felt very different. It clicks! For the first time in a while, there’s a MacBook with a trackpad that actually, physically moves. You can click it from any spot on the trackpad, so the experience of using it shouldn’t feel much different.
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