Apple Store has for
EDU Members:
Apple MacBook Neo Laptop (4 Colors) for Pre-Order on sale
from $499.
Shipping is free.
Thanks Deal Hunter
Eragorn for sharing this deal
Note, you need to make color, storage, trade-in and warranty selection and purchase options before adding to cart. Availability starts March 11, 2026.
Available Options:
- 256GB Solid State Drive $499
- 512GB Solid State Drive $599
Available Colors:
Specs (
source):
- 13" Liquid Retina (2408×1506), IPS, 219 PPI, 500 nits brightness, 1B colors, sRGB
- Apple A18 Pro — 6-core CPU (2P + 4E), 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, 60GB/s memory bandwidth
- 8GB unified memory
- Battery Up to 16 hrs video streaming / 11 hrs web; 36.5Wh battery; 20W USB-C charging
- Ports:
- 1x USB-C (USB 3, up to 10Gb/s, charging & DisplayPort)
- 1x USB-C (USB 2, up to 480Mb/s)
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth 6
- 1080p FaceTime HD
- Dual speakers w/ Spatial Audio (Dolby Atmos), dual-mic array w/ beamforming
- Magic Keyboard w/ multi-touch trackpad; Touch ID on select models
- 0.50" H × 11.71" W × 8.12" D; 2.7 lbs
- In the Box:
- MacBook Neo
- 20W USB-C Power Adapter
- USB-C Charge Cable (1.5m)
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340 Comments
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Absolutely --at least in the near term. Was able to pick up a perfect walmart open box m1 air for $308 2 weeks ago, so new (or practically new) units are still available -- (for now). Scratch and dinged stuff will be available forever --there were a lot of these sold.
What is cool is the neo doesn't currently have a >8GB ram option --so the M1 should in theory should have a fairly long support life --at least it won't be dropped for ram size.
(8gb works fine for a bunch of use cases, but is a bit light on others --recommend holding out for 16gb or higher if you expect to be doing more demanding stuff a lot of the time).
Anyway, cool to have options that don't cost historically typical apple money.
No backlight on a $700 laptop...
8GB of RAM split between CPU and GPU, run a Youtube video and some chrome tabs and 8GB is gone and you're thrashing the SSD with swap files, especially with MacOS Tahoe being such a bad update. Apple has no magic to make 8GB more than 8GB. For a kid this is fine, but for an adult this is very questionable unless they barely intend to use the laptop.
Two ports (one will be needed for charging), one being USB 2.0... Only able to do output to one monitor. Not great but limitations of the SoC.
36.5Wh Battery This is something I think a lot of people are glossing over. This is actually quite bad for laptops in general, and the lowest battery size Apple offers. They are claiming it will have UP TO 11 hours of web browsing battery life, this is not real-world estimates but best case scenario with the screen at low brightness and no background usage. Real world you'll probably get 7 hours, so youll be charging this every day. The MBA has a 53.8 Wh battery, and up top 15 hours of web use. To make matters worse, the NEO and MBA weight the same, despite the NEO have significantly less battery. And before anyone says 'but the A18 Pro is super efficient', it is, but a lot of the power consumption comes from the display/wifi/etc.
TLDR; If you are willing to use Windows/Linux there are plenty of last gen 16GB/1TB/sometimes OLED laptops with faster CPUs and iGPUs for the similar prices. If you arent willing to use Windows/Linux youre better off buying a last gen sale/refurb MBA, basically anything M2 or newer is better in most ways. I wouldnt recommend you buy this unless its for a kid and that kid has to have zero intentions of playing games; or for a senior who will use it for limited use web browsing/email/etc.
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If this had an M1 or M2 chip, this would be a great deal. With a phone processor, it seems like Apple is saying that this is disposable.
Also, be advised that the base $599 model doesn't have a backlit keyboard. You need to upgrade to the $699 512GB model for that. And TouchID, if you care about that.
someone more security minded could extol its flaws or pros
M4 went to $750 at Christmas, 850 frequently after that. Now m5 is coming, those sales should come back and clear out even lower.
With M5 at 512gb base, that should lower the value of m4 and below.
eBay has used prices pretty much in line, Facebook prices around me are nonsense. eBay Excellent condition M4's have been going for 750, m3 16 gb ram 650, that should start to go even lower now ideally
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$499 entry point to a new Macbook laptop makes it more affordable. That is what the intent was for this machine, affordability. While still being in the Apple ecosystem and having a machine running MacOS.
If we were in the market for a new Macbook, we would give this one serious consideration. We have family members who literally just browse the web, watch videos, work on office files, etc. This is plenty sufficient and saves a few hundred dollars over buying the Macbook Air.
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