MacBook Air Sky Blue (2025) to NEO Pink: Downgrade?

Plus the USB-C ports on the MacBook Neo only support USB3 on the rear port and USB2 on the front port. Both ports can be used for charging. It is crazy that Apple would release a new product in 2026 with a USB2 port. Even Apple's USB3 ports are slow 10Gb/s versus 20Gb/s for other brands. And from the pictures on the Apple website, the ports are not marked as such.

Because of this, the option for connecting an external display is very limited compared to the Airs or Pros.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/specs/

You may want to review the following article about the MacBook Neo where it mentions how limited it is and it will only be good for having at most a couple dozen browser tabs open due to the 8GB of RAM. The MacBook Neo is only intended for very basic functionality......very basic. Light web browsing (small number of tabs open), email, notes, video streaming, music listening, basic word processing & spreadsheet use. No Keyboard backlight....a real bummer if you use the laptop in a dimly lit or dark room.

Preliminary review of the announcement:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/the-599-macbook-neo-is-apples-long-awaited-colorful-lower-cost-macbook/

Here is their hands on review:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/macbook-neo-hands-on-apple-build-quality-at-a-substantially-lower-price/

This forum is already full of posts where people bought an Apple laptop with insufficient memory & storage. Most people should be purchasing a computer with at least 16GB of memory and a 500GB SSD.

People should check the Recommended System Requirements for all the third party apps they intend to use and purchase a computer that at least meets or better yet exceeds those Recommended requirements. Do not buy just based on price....you will always lose.

yadi258 wrote:

I just got the macbook air sky blue (2025), will i be downgrading if i trade in for the NEO pink version

Yes, it would be a downgrade based on the specs. Whether or not it's a downgrade for the uses you intend to use it for is another matter.

All models of the MBAir 2025 are M5 and have at least 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD; and you can upgrade from there (at time of purchase).

The NEO has the A18 chip (A-series chips are used in iPads & iPhones) and only 8GB RAM. Think of it as an iPad with a keyboard running macOS. It's very basic.

+1 👍🏽

Yep.

The MacBook NEO sits at the bottom rung of Apple's laptop offerings. A fairly nice entry level Mac.

yadi258 wrote:

I just got the macbook air sky blue (2025), will i be downgrading if i trade in for the NEO pink version

Yes. If you compare the MacBook Neo to the M5 MacBook Air, the MacBook Air has

• A faster processor. The processor in the Neo should be almost as fast as the one in the M4 MacBook Air on single-core CPU benchmarks, and similar to the one in the older M1 MacBook Air when it comes to GPU and multi-core CPU benchmarks. So it's no slouch, but it's no M5, either.
• More RAM – 16 to 32 GB, instead of the 8 GB in the Neo
• More SSD space - 512 GB to 4 TB, instead of the 256 GB to 512 GB in the Neo
• The ability to drive up to two monitors (instead of one)
• Thunderbolt 4 and USB4
• USB 3.1 Gen 2 support on both USB-C ports (instead of just on one)
• DisplayPort Alt Mode support on both USB-C ports (instead of just on one)
• A choice of screen sizes (13" or 15"). The Neo is available with any screen size you like as long as it is 13". A MacBook Neo weighs less than a 15" M5 MacBook Air, but the same as a 13" one.
• A somewhat better sound system
• Wi-Fi 7 instead of Wi-Fi 6e
• Touch ID on all models. (The 512 GB Neo has Touch ID; the 256 GB one doesn't.)

Whether you would rather have the lower price of the MacBook Neo, or the extra features of the MacBook Air, is something for you to decide.

MartinR wrote:

And at present there is much uncertainty about what apps will actually run on the NEO.

Apple's basic apps (Pages, Numbers, Safari, etc) will certainly run because they are natively preinstalled.

But the specs for many if not most 3rd party apps say they require an Intel or Apple Silicon (M-series) processor. The NEO has an A18 processor ... which is not Intel or M-series.

Apple created M-series processors by taking A-series designs, and scaling them up for better performance.

The machine code instruction sets are so similar that

• Many recent iPad Pros and iPad Airs use M-series processors
• iPhone and iPad apps designed to run on platforms that often have A-series processors can run on Apple Silicon Macs if the developers of those apps permit it. (The obstacles to having an iPhone or iPad app run acceptably on a Mac seem to have more to do with differences in user interface hardware than in the CPU instruction sets per se.)

I would assume that at a very low level, there are some differences between M- and A-series processors, and between different A-series and M-series processors. E.g., hardware acceleration of AI computations in a M5 (which has both a Neural Engine, and support integrated into the GPU cores) may work differently than on M1 through M4 processors and the A18 Pro (which only have Neural Engine cores).

Also, M-series chips support Thunderbolt and USB4. I don't know if any A-series chips do.

But I would also expect that since macOS controls access to "bare metal", and provides frameworks for doing many kinds of things, that a lot of low-level differences are invisible to application code – or handled in such a fashion that old code works on new hardware, even if modifying applications to use new APIs might permit the applications to take fuller advantage of new hardware features.

I suppose there are many developers scrambling right now to evaluate what they need to do to modify their apps to run on an A18 with macOS.

HWTech wrote:

People should check the Recommended System Requirements for all the third party apps they intend to use and purchase a computer that at least meets or better yet exceeds those Recommended requirements.

And at present there is much uncertainty about what apps will actually run on the NEO.

Apple's basic apps (Pages, Numbers, Safari, etc) will certainly run because they are natively preinstalled.

But the specs for many if not most 3rd party apps say they require an Intel or Apple Silicon (M-series) processor. The NEO has an A18 processor ... which is not Intel or M-series.

I suppose there are many developers scrambling right now to evaluate what they need to do to modify their apps to run on an A18 with macOS.

HWTech wrote:

It is crazy that Apple would release a new product in 2026 with a USB2 port.

*COUGH* Any iPhone with a USB-C port that isn't a Pro or Pro Max model. *COUGH*.

Even Apple's USB3 ports are slow 10Gb/s versus 20Gb/s for other brands.

According to Wikipedia, USB4 defines three incompatible "up to 20 Gbps" USB transfer modes. One of the two new ones has the marketing name "USB4 20 Gbps" and is mandatory for USB4 host ports (like the USB4 ports found on all Macs with M-series chips). USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is optional for USB4 host ports; a polite way of saying that vendors are free to throw it under the bus.

Then again, I don't believe that any of Apple's Intel-based Macs that had USB-C host ports (before USB4 came along) supported USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 on those ports. (USB-C is mandatory to achieve USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speed.)

Apple's USB4 ports do support USB4 40 Gbps mode, which I believe is optional for USB4 host ports.

Because of this, the option for connecting an external display is very limited compared to the Airs or Pros.

The MacBook Neo supports a single external display with a resolution of up to 4K @ 60 Hz. There is only one USB-C port that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, and it's also the only one that supports USB 3.

There is no support for Thunderbolt or for USB4, and my guess would be that since the A18 Pro chip originally went into the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, it simply doesn't have Thunderbolt and USB4 controllers. The absence of Thunderbolt means that you won't be driving a 27" 5K Apple Studio Display off of the Neo – although I doubt whether most people who bought the Neo based on price would consider that monitor ($$$) in the first place.