The MacBook Neo marks Apple’s first entry into the budget laptop segment in the US and EU markets. I say that because, unlike in most Western markets where the Neo’s starting price puts it firmly in mid-range territory, Rs 69,900 does not make for a mid-range laptop by any stretch in India. The laptop’s bigger and more capable sibling, the MacBook Air M2, regularly retails around that same price point, which makes the Neo’s relative value a harder sell here.
For this comparison, I’m putting the MacBook Neo up against the MacBook Air M4 starting at Rs 89,990. The roughly Rs 20,000 price gap between the two is close enough to make you question whether the Neo delivers enough value or if you’re simply better off stretching a little more for the newer M4 Air.
Table of Contents
The Mac look, at a lower price
Apple positions the MacBook Neo as the most affordable Mac notebook it has ever sold, but there are no compromises when it comes to design. You still get a unibody aluminium chassis in four playful colours (Silver, Blush, Citrus and Indigo) with a colour-matched keyboard deck, so it does not look or feel cheap. The playful colourway is also one of the Neo’s key traits, helping it appeal to a younger crowd. The port situation is barebones, though, you get just two USB-C ports (one USB 3 and one USB 2) and not much else.
The MacBook Air M4 sticks to the familiar wedge-less, razor-thin design from the previous generation, with a new Sky Blue finish alongside Midnight, Starlight and Silver. It brings in higher-end touches like MagSafe 3 charging, a 3.5mm headphone jack and two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, and it remains one of the thinnest and lightest 13-inch and 15-inch laptops you can buy in India, which keeps it very appealing for frequent travellers and office commuters.
On the ergonomics front, both laptops use Apple’s Magic Keyboard layout and a large glass trackpad, so everyday typing and navigation feel familiar if you move between them. The Air, however, has an advantage when it comes to the finer details. It has a backlit keyboard, a Force Touch trackpad and Touch ID on the base variant, none of which the Neo offers without spending more. The Thunderbolt 4 ports and dedicated MagSafe connector also add to the Air’s flexibility if you regularly juggle drives, docks and external monitors.
Display and sound: close, but not quite
Both machines ship with a 13-inch Liquid Retina display that supports a wide colour gamut and up to 1 billion colours, so day-to-day viewing feels sharp and vibrant whether you are streaming, editing photos for social media or working in Office and Google Docs. The Neo’s panel runs at a 2408 x 1506 resolution, 500 nits peak brightness, and uses an anti-reflective coating, which keeps text crisp and cuts stray reflections, something you will appreciate if you often work in bright cafés or lecture halls.
The MacBook Air M4 has a slightly higher resolution at 2560 x 1664p and also peaks at 500 nits. However, it comes in two sizes, a 13.6-inch and a 15.3-inch, both with True Tone support and a wider DCI-P3 colour coverage. Colours should look a bit richer on the Air, and the larger 15-inch variant gives you significantly more screen space if you need that option.
Another interesting difference is around the webcam setup. The Neo skips the notch entirely and uses uniform black bezels with a standard 1080p camera, which makes for a cleaner design choice. The Air M4 keeps the notch but pairs it with a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera that tracks you around the frame and supports Desk View, which is a useful upgrade if you take a lot of video calls or present over Zoom and Teams.
When it comes to audio, the Neo’s dual-speaker setup is adequate for calls and background music, but you will notice its limits if you stream content or watch movies without headphones. The Air M4 has a good lead here with a four-speaker system on the 13-inch and a six-speaker setup with force-cancelling woofers on the 15-inch. It should offer significantly better stereo separation and bass in daily use.
The Air also packs a three-mic array versus the Neo’s dual-mic setup, giving it a slight advantage for voice clarity on calls and recorded voice-overs.
Power, memory and real-world limits
The MacBook Neo runs on the A18 Pro chip, the same silicon Apple used in the iPhone 16 Pro series, with a 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU and 8GB of unified memory on the base variant. Apple pitches it at everyday workloads like browsing, streaming, note-taking, light photo edits and student projects, claiming it runs routine tasks up to 50 percent faster and on-device AI workloads up to three times faster than a best-selling Intel Core Ultra 5 Windows laptop.
Early benchmarks show the Neo comfortably beating the M1 MacBook Air in both single-core and multi-core scores, so it should feel snappy if you mostly live in Safari, Office, Zoom and a handful of productivity apps. The concern, however, is the 8GB memory ceiling.
At around Rs 70,000, you have a wide range of capable Windows laptops that ship with 16GB of RAM as a minimum, which gives them a multitasking advantage over the Neo, especially when you are juggling multiple browser tabs, communication apps and a few background processes at the same time. The smartphone-level GPU does not help either if you want to do heavy photo and video edits. Whereas you can buy gaming laptops with a dedicated GPU at a similar price point, which is much more capable when it comes to editing.
The MacBook Air M4, on the other hand, packs Apple’s powerful M4 chip with a 10-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU and a base of 16GB of unified memory that you can configure up to 32GB. Apple claims it runs up to twice as fast as the M1 Air for everyday tasks, and the extra memory alone makes it a far more comfortable machine for heavy multitasking, large creative projects and running multiple demanding apps side by side, all while staying completely silent since there is no fan.
The M4 chip gives the Air significantly more capability for creative work, coding, light 3D and AI tools, and you also get stronger external display support, making it straightforward to pair a 4K monitor at your desk if you want one laptop that handles both portable and desktop workloads in India.
Battery life: closer than you might think
Apple claims up to 16 hours of battery life on the MacBook Neo. For students or office users, that should comfortably last a standard workday without reaching for the charger, especially if you keep brightness around the midpoint indoors.
The MacBook Air M4 claims up to 18 hours, but in real-world use, the gap between the two likely won’t be significant. Both machines will comfortably last a full workday under typical usage. For most users, the Neo’s battery life should be more than adequate.
The Neo uses standard USB-C, which is a straightforward convenience since most users charge via the port anyway. The Air M4 ships with a colour-matched MagSafe 3 cable, which is a handy add-on since it keeps both Thunderbolt ports free for accessories, but it is not a dealbreaker either way.
Conclusion
The MacBook Neo is an interesting product in a global context, but Apple’s Indian pricing makes the conversation a bit trickier. At Rs 69,900, it is not the clear-cut budget buy it appears to be in the Western markets, and that is the big challenge. You get a capable, well-built machine that runs macOS cleanly and handles everyday workloads without breaking a sweat, but the 8GB memory base and smartphone-level chipset mean it’s not extremely capable, especially when Windows rivals at this price point routinely ship with 16GB RAM, an on par chipset, and a discrete GPU.
The MacBook Air M4 at Rs 89,990 is a different proposition altogether. The Rs 20,000 gap buys you a significantly more capable chipset, double the base memory, a better speaker, a slightly better display, a superior webcam and a more versatile port setup. If you plan to use this machine for the next four to five years, those advantages add up and will help you down the line.
If you are a student, a light user or someone buying their first Mac, the Neo is a decent entry point into the Apple ecosystem, particularly if you already use an iPhone, iPad or other Apple devices, and it is perfectly capable for casual workloads. But if you are a working professional, a creator or someone who expects their laptop to keep up with a growing workload, the M4 Air is the smarter long-term purchase. The price gap is small enough that stretching for it makes far more sense than settling.
Apple Macbook Neo (A18 Pro/8 GB/256 GB SSD/MAC) Laptop Images
