It's been a busy week at Apple. First there was the iPhone 17e, then a refreshed iPad Air followed swiftly by souped-up MacBook Pros, and now, to finish things off, Apple has dropped the MacBook Neo, a bargain-basement laptop that can be yours for just $599. It is by some margin the cheapest laptop the company has ever made.
Seeing as this comes in bold iBook G3-like color options, sports a 16-hour battery, 13-inch Liquid Retina screen, 1080p HD webcam, and dual Spatial Audio speakers (with Dolby Atmos), all wrapped in an aluminum case that weighs just 2.7 pounds, you can well imagine that Apple is going to shift a fair few of these budget beauties.
But while the MacBook Neo has the Cupertino crowd all very pleased with themselves, and rightly so, this keenly priced laptop means there's another product in the Apple lineup that now looks remarkably overpriced: the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
Budget Balance
You may well walk into the Apple Store on March 11 and demand a Citrus MacBook Neo (yes, get that color), and gleefully hand over six hundred bucks secure in the knowledge you're bagging a deal, but anyone doing so can also rightfully ask themselves, “Hang on, how on Earth can Apple charge me only $599 for a new MacBook, but then demand $800 for an Apple Watch?”
Well, the answer to why the MacBook Neo is so cheap lies largely with the fact that it's powered by Apple's A18 Pro chip—the same processor inside the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. iPads have used Mac chips for years, but now a MacBook is running an iPhone chip. Using an iPhone chip is way cheaper, thanks to the iPhone's enormous scale. Other savings come in the form of a mechanical (not haptic) multi-touch trackpad, a non-backlit keyboard, fewer ports, and only 8 GB of RAM (non-upgradeable).
The Apple Watch Ultra 3. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
When you try to figure out why the Ultra 3 costs so much more than the Neo, let alone its Watch siblings, things get trickier for Apple. Take a look at this official comparison page for the Apple Watch. If we allow ourselves to discount iterative improvements (brighter screen, better speakers, bigger battery, better GPS, etc) and concentrate on what you can only get on the Ultra and not on the Apple Watch 11 or Watch SE, we're left with just these: emergency SOS via satellite, scuba diving features, a siren, and a titanium build with sapphire crystal. Now consider the Series 11 starts at $399, and the SE at $249. All boast the same S10 chip, which in 2025 wasn't even updated over the Series 10. That's a mighty big premium on the Ultra.