The M1 will be out of warranty. Which might not matter to an OcUKer, but would to my Mum buying one or a parent getting one for a secondary school kid to do their homework on and play a bit of Minecraft etc.
*** The Official MacBook Neo thread (it has the A18 Pro chip and everything!) ***
- Thread starter nlel1975
- Start date
M1 model second hand is potentially up to 6 years old but they're good value for £300.
I have access to the Apple education store so I'm currently weighing up a Neo for £500 or M4 Air for £750.
Soldato
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I'm so glad I stumped up the extra for the M4 Air. Using it right now and absolutely love it.
I'm sure I would have been happy with the Neo but I feel the M4 will just age better with the superior SOC, 16GB RAM and faster SSD. Add to the backlit keyboard and Touch ID, definitely was worth the extra.
I'm sure I would have been happy with the Neo but I feel the M4 will just age better with the superior SOC, 16GB RAM and faster SSD. Add to the backlit keyboard and Touch ID, definitely was worth the extra.
In your opinion. For office/web work, and even more, it's absolutely fine.
Good feedback that.
Used M2 Air's with 16GB RAM look to be going for under £400 now on auctions
You've used one?
Only trouble with used ones is just think of the knackered battery.
For the ~£500 Edu discount price most Macbook Neo's will sell for they make sense but I'd agree that if you're spending any more than that a Macbook Air M4 is the way to go..
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Soldato
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Looks the ideal upgrade for older parents - my mums getting one, upgrading from an old duel core laptop with 54mbps wireless chip! 
The Neo should be a *tad* faster then - she's already got an iPhone 17 and iPad so will complete the ecosystem well for her
The Neo should be a *tad* faster then - she's already got an iPhone 17 and iPad so will complete the ecosystem well for her
I did wonder if I should have ordered a mouse with mine, as I distinctly recall not liking the Mac mouse that I used a few years ago.
Of course, it could have been an entry-level one. Without a mouse, I'm finding it takes me a long time to find my way around the desktop, and so forth.
One thing I appreciate greatly is that the battery is worlds better than on the Lenovo Legion 5. No comparison there.
However, all this talk of the Mac Air is starting to make me wonder if I should return it and get an M4/M5 Air...
I do like it, but maybe a slightly bigger screen would be nice...
Unfortunately, trying to import an Open-Office file is proving to be tricky.
It's an .odt file, which I believe isn't properly supported on a Mac.
I suppose I could copy everything over to Keynote or some other installed document reader.
Saving it as an .rtf file seems to have worked.
Of course, it could have been an entry-level one. Without a mouse, I'm finding it takes me a long time to find my way around the desktop, and so forth.
One thing I appreciate greatly is that the battery is worlds better than on the Lenovo Legion 5. No comparison there.
However, all this talk of the Mac Air is starting to make me wonder if I should return it and get an M4/M5 Air...
I do like it, but maybe a slightly bigger screen would be nice...
Unfortunately, trying to import an Open-Office file is proving to be tricky.
It's an .odt file, which I believe isn't properly supported on a Mac.
I suppose I could copy everything over to Keynote or some other installed document reader.
Saving it as an .rtf file seems to have worked.
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Libre Office is on the Mac and supports .odt files natively.
Associate
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It is absolutely sufficient. what a load of nonsense.
I'm still waiting for confirmation that they've used one. Not holding my breath.
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As others have said it’s more than fine for its use case it’s a budget student/light user device. Your making assumptions as I am guessing you haven’t used one yourself.
I was rather keen to get one and have watched as many reviews as most.. The 8GB seems like a non issue for its intended use, only once you start pushing to things that its not really designed for does that limit seem to show its face.
You can all rest easy as I haven't used one. That definitely means 8gb will be sufficient. Bunch of sheep honestly. What a non event.
Edit: deleted irrelevant quote accidentally added
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PC laptops around the £600 mark generally have 16GB of RAM, but a few of the slightly more premium ones (e.g. from HP) only have 8GB. I would say that as a premium product, the Neo is probably still competitive at that price with that amount of memory. I also think it would be impractical for Apple to be launching a £600 laptop with 16GB of RAM with the current supply and pricing issues in the market.
That being said, I was running out of memory on an 8GB Macbook Pro almost exactly 10 years ago, on a daily basis. I was doing a lot of office work at the time, and some light development tasks (XCode, VMware, various other bits and bobs). I appreciate that that was an Intel model, and the ARM64 ones are more memory efficient, but over time the trajectory of software seems to be that it uses more and more memory - particularly Electron apps. For example, Discord is currently sitting at around 800MB of RAM used on my Mac. I was involved in purchasing new computers at the last company I worked for, and I chose to go for 16GB RAM Macbook Airs (M1) for the general office and support workers rather than 8GB ones, partly for future-proofing, but also because the first thing anyone seemed to do was install Chrome, which (at least at the time) used a heck of a lot of memory, and experiments proved that their day-to-day tasks ran a hell of a lot better on 16GB laptops than 8GB ones; everyone could spot the difference. This was principally heavy Chrome usage, plus MS Office, Slack, and one or two other things.
I think that it is important to take into consideration the fact that the Neo will be faster in general use than a PC laptop at the same price, and will undoubtedly have a better trackpad, and probably screen, than the majority of the competition. I think that to hit that price, compromising on the RAM was probably the right thing to do... but a 16GB model would have been awesome
That being said, I was running out of memory on an 8GB Macbook Pro almost exactly 10 years ago, on a daily basis. I was doing a lot of office work at the time, and some light development tasks (XCode, VMware, various other bits and bobs). I appreciate that that was an Intel model, and the ARM64 ones are more memory efficient, but over time the trajectory of software seems to be that it uses more and more memory - particularly Electron apps. For example, Discord is currently sitting at around 800MB of RAM used on my Mac. I was involved in purchasing new computers at the last company I worked for, and I chose to go for 16GB RAM Macbook Airs (M1) for the general office and support workers rather than 8GB ones, partly for future-proofing, but also because the first thing anyone seemed to do was install Chrome, which (at least at the time) used a heck of a lot of memory, and experiments proved that their day-to-day tasks ran a hell of a lot better on 16GB laptops than 8GB ones; everyone could spot the difference. This was principally heavy Chrome usage, plus MS Office, Slack, and one or two other things.
I think that it is important to take into consideration the fact that the Neo will be faster in general use than a PC laptop at the same price, and will undoubtedly have a better trackpad, and probably screen, than the majority of the competition. I think that to hit that price, compromising on the RAM was probably the right thing to do... but a 16GB model would have been awesome
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Associate
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The people who are the target market for this machine are probably not even aware of 8gb, 12gb or 16gb. They are people who may have an iPhone or an ipad already and have had to look elsewhere for a laptop if they cannot stretch to £1k for a MacBook Air. They aren't editing 4k videos. They aren't hardened gamers. They will be browsing the net, they will be in education and writing essays or doing homework. They will be consuming content. The gains from having an Apple product that integrates with their other stuff will far outweigh the fact that the benchmark testing they will never do will have the machine slightly behind a windows laptop at the same price point (if indeed it is). What are we saying 8gb cant do that they need to do? Nothing.
As it turns out in practice you can actually video edit on this machine, you can photo edit, you can push it beyond anything the target market is likely to do with it.
I have an M2 Air. It has 8gb RAM. It was cutting edge and brilliant when I bought it new, and it still does everything I could throw at it. We are far too obsessed with spec sheets and not actually looking at what happens in reality.