The $599 MacBook Neo stunned the budget laptop market — but Windows laptops still have some advantages

Earlier this month, Apple released the MacBook Neo, a $599 laptop that impressed reviewers (myself included) with surprisingly good quality for the price.

"Yes, the MacBook Neo is $599. But it rarely feels like it," I wrote in my review. "Apple invested in a premium aluminium chassis, a bright, good-quality screen, and a decent keyboard and mouse. Putting performance aside, those are the parts of a computer that most people care the most about."

I stand by those words, but there are, of course, people who put performance above all else, even at $599. And to those people, I have good news: You can get a Windows PC!

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Some table stakes here: We haven't been able to review a ton of budget Windows PCs. In fact, the companies that make them don't usually like to make them available for loans. But we've done a bit of internet window shopping, and using some comparisons from our own data and online, we can more closely evaluate the performance gains that some Windows laptops offer at this price point.

The competition

I browsed multiple big box stores and shops from laptop manufacturers. One quick theme came up: Many laptop deals in this price range are sold by third-party sellers, some of which don't seem so reputable.

I stuck with laptops that are being sold directly from the vendor's store. The MacBook Neo, sold at many stores, will come with a 1-year warranty and support. So these systems had to, also. That weeded out a surprising number of candidates.

To get good pricing, though, some of this had to rely on sales. For example, HP sells a 14-inch laptop on its website with a $499.99 MSRP with a last-gen Intel N150, a 1366 x 768 display topping at 250 nits, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of eMMC storage, and Windows 11 Home in S Mode. At least it has a Copilot key? Shoppers should be aware that they can do better if they shop around.

I chose three major competitors:

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x, a Snapdragon laptop with the latest standards, but a two-year old CPU. Sound familiar?
• Asus Vivobook Go 15, a $499 notebook, matching the MacBook Neo's education price.
• Dell 14 Plus, on sale exclusively for $649 at Dell.com, shows what an extra $50 can get you on Windows if you catch the right sale.

Here they are in a table to compare the major specs:

Something for everyone

If you want a premium experience, the MacBook Neo will win. Of these systems, the Neo is the only one with a completely aluminum body. Others, like the IdeaPad and the Dell 16 Plus, have aluminum top covers but are otherwise made of plastic. Apple’s is also the lightest machine of the bunch, at 2.7 pounds, while the IdeaPad and Asus are both more than 3.5 pounds.

The big question most people will want to know is about system memory. The Qualcomm-based IdeaPad and the Dell 16 Plus both come with 16GB, while the Asus sticks with 8GB, like the Neo. All of those are soldered (in Dell's case, it's also on-package because it uses Intel's Lunar Lake architecture).

Apple's A18 Pro, a six-core processor with 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro in 2024. The Intel Core Ultra 5 226V in the Dell, an 8-core processor, was released the same year. Months later, in January 2025, the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100), the least-powerful chip in this laptop lineup, dropped. The Vivobook Go boasts the oldest processor; the AMD Ryzen 5 7520U launched in 2022 with 4 cores on a 6nm process (that platform launched in 2023).

I can tell you from experience that the MacBook Neo's display is significantly better than what you typically see in big box stores at the $599 price point. If you get this Dell 16 Plus while on sale, you can get a 2560 x 1600 screen, which is slightly higher in resolution. But Dell is only promising 300 nits of brightness; we measured the Neo at 452.6 nits. Asus promises just 250 nits of brightness. On paper, the Neo sure sounds better – and it looks quite good in person. The other laptops offer bog-standard 1080p displays, which I would've called good enough for the price until now.

Both Apple and Dell have 1080p webcams. Those vary a ton in quality. I know Apple's is great, I can't speak for Dell's. When I showed Apple's to managing editor Matt Safford, he said, "I'm pretty sure that's the best-looking 1080p [laptop] webcam I've ever seen." The other two have 720p webcams, but hey, at least they have privacy shutters.

All of Apple's competition has larger batteries, though that isn't everything in battery life. In our MacBook Neo review, the Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Plus and a 50 WHr battery outperformed the Neo, so it's possible that the IdeaPad, with a lower-power chip and a 60 Whr battery, and a lower-resolution, likely dimmer, lower screen would go even longer.

Apple's laptop also comes with a 20W USB-C charger. You could use a faster one, but if we're going based on what you get in the box, that's measly. The IdeaPad and Dell come with 65W chargers, while the Vivobook comes with a 45W charger.

One of the biggest issues I had with the MacBook Neo was the lack of backlit keys. Lenovo has backlit keys on the IdeaPad, as does Dell on the 14 Plus. But Asus' Vivobook also has darkened keys.

There’s no doubt that Apple's competitors offer more ports, including mixes of USB-A and USB-C, SD card readers, and even a Thunderbolt 4 port on that Dell. Many of the USB ports are 5GBps, making them slower than the fastest port on the Mac. But if variety trumps speed, then the PC is your friend here.

Single and multi-core performance

The main reason these systems weren't compared in our Neo review was that we didn't have scores in our benchmark database. Just to get a sense of performance, though, we're comparing our Geekbench 6 scores for the MacBook Neo to what we're seeing in the Geekbench database for others. It's not ideal, but it's what we've got to work with.

In this comparison, we see that Apple's Neo with A18 Pro still maintains a strong lead in single-core performance, where most Neo owners are likely to spend most of their time browsing the web, writing documents, working on spreadsheets, watching videos or movies, or doing other basic tasks. That being said, if you do switch into multi-core performance, both the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1-26-100 and Intel Core Ultra 5 226V outdid the Neo. Given the IdeaPad and Dell Plus housing those laptops also have 16GB of RAM as configured, they're more able to run multi-core tasks well in the first place.

Geekbench is great for emulating short, bursty workloads — the kind you're likely to run on a budget laptop. But this may not be illustrative of how these systems perform over a longer duration of time. And of course, a lot depends on what you actually do on your laptop.

What about education pricing?

Apple shaves $100 off the MacBook Neo for education pricing, bringing it down to $499, the same price as the Asus Vivobook. When you compare this head-to-head with the Vivobook on paper, the Neo wins every time, with the Vivobook’s bigger battery. (A larger battery doesn't inherently mean better battery life, though).

That being said, there is one important note to think about: software. While many students will likely be able to get along just fine with macOS, if you're in a specialized high school program or college major that uses software that only runs on Windows, you'll need a PC. If that's the case, leaning towards x86, like that Intel Lunar Lake chip in the Dell, is probably a smart choice; Qualcomm still has some work to do on app compatibility.

But if you're doing most work in the browser, Microsoft Office, or other software available on both platforms, the Mac's price will be extremely enticing here. The best Windows competitors are a bit more expensive.

A new breed of competition?

In general, when I review systems, I review everything about the system, as a full package. And for people doing basic tasks, I maintain that the MacBook Neo is a great value.

That being said, it does have limits. Those who need multi-core performance, more RAM, and more ports (and more properly-labeled ports, at that) do have options in this price range. You just have to give up something else, like build quality and/or a bright screen. That's how cheap laptops tend to work. But on single-core workloads, build quality, and when it comes to the displays, you really do have to hand it to Apple.

In Asus' most recent earnings call, co-CEO S.Y. Hsu said that the MacBook Neo was "certainly a shock to the entire market,” before turning around and saying it was mostly a content consumption device with just 8GB of RAM that you can't upgrade. I would tell him to also look at the Vivobook his company sells.

But that shock will hopefully lay the foundation for better competition from Windows OEMs at lower prices. It will be difficult during this RAM crisis, but raising the bar for budget notebooks across the ecosystem would really be great for everyone, no matter what operating system they prefer. And frankly, Apple's competitors better be ready to answer the MacBook Neo with something that feels as complete as the Neo does, or they'll risk looking out of touch. There are plenty of people who prefer a Windows PC to a Mac, but it's not like Microsoft has been earning fans with its OS lately. There's work to do.