Testing the new MacBook Neo to see if it will work for some of the staff.
Here's the configuration that I ordered:
- MacBook Neo - Indigo
- A18 Pro
- 8GB memory
- 512GB SSD
- Magic Keyboard with Touch ID
It looks familiar. Kind of similar to the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air that I use everyday. Similar but not quite...
If I'm being honest, I didn't have high expectations for the MacBook Neo. I was thinking this might be a repeat of the 12-inch MacBook from a few years ago.
Sitting it next to my 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, I didn't notice the difference right away.
The overall shape is almost identical. Then a friend mentioned that the corners has a slightly larger radius than the MacBook Air. It's subtle but he pointed it out, I can see it.
I opened up the laptop and first thing I noticed were the keys. They're white. Or at least white-ish.
I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. My initial reaction is I don't like it. Because in a shared or high use environment, white tends to show dirt and wear quickly.
There's no backlight on the keyboard as well. The trackpad also felt slightly different. It's because this one clicks. A physical click instead of the haptic feedback you get from the modern MacBooks.
I also noticed a few limitations pretty quickly.
While both USB-C ports accepts power for charging. Only one of them is capable of doing external displays.
While looking at the Apple's specs, I also noticed that the 256GB model doesn't include Touch ID.
Anyway, I continued to set it up like any other staff device. It got enrolled into Mosyle and pulled down all the standard apps automatically.
From there, we wanted to see how far we can push it.
The quickest test we could think of is plug it into a DisplayLink dock and try running simultaneous 4k videos.
The videos played pretty smoothly. It struggled a bit on one of the screens earlier on but got a little better after a few minutes.
I'm quite impressed with how it performed. If it's able to do that, it should be able to handle day-to-day work like checking emails, writing docs and spreadsheets, web browsing, etc.
The only concern for now is the 8GB of memory. Chrome will probably eat through that 8GB as you open up more tabs and then it starts using your storage.
So, more testing needs to be done.
I reached out to one of our staff who has an older Mac to see if she'll be the guinea pig for it and she agreed.
We'll see how it holds up after a few months of real, everyday use.
Would I deploy this?
Right now, not across the board.
There's a lot to like here. It's lightweight, silent, and surprisingly capable. For basic tasks like email, web browsing, and documents it should be more than enough.
There are a few things that give me pause.
The 8GB memory is the biggest one. There's no option to get something higher. It's not an issue now but once storage gets full and a few Chrome tabs are open, it could be an issue.
Then there are a few smaller things:
- Only one port for external display
- No keyboard backlight
These are minor quirks and not dealbreakers.
That said, there could be a place for this for deployment.
I probably won't deploy this to video or production staff anytime soon. But for the right roles, it would actually be a great fit.