How will a Macbook Neo compare to a 2017 MacBook Air?

It will be a marked improvement. Even though the Neo has a iPhone CPU, it's still going to be leagues better than a 9 year old Intel Mac.

The RAM may be a sticking point for longevity though.

But if you are only doing lower causal tasks like email, web browsing, document creation, some photo management etc.. it will work perfectly fine and will feel much snappier than your current 2017 MacBook Air, no question.

shuwalows wrote:

What I use my MacBook for is.

Reading Streaming TV and Movies, basic spreadsheet and business info.

Emails. web searching and basic kids games.

This is all I require and at least 5 years of apple updates.

If the MacBook nano can do this I am satisfied.

None of us can promise how many updates the MacBook Neo will get – although Apple's history with other Macs suggests that you would get at least five updates after Tahoe. (Even a low-end 13" 2020 Intel-based MBP which had the misfortune to be discontinued after roughly six months received five updates.)

As for the rest of what you plan on doing, 8 GB of RAM will probably be enough.

I would suggest considering the version of the MacBook Neo with 512 GB of internal storage – you'd be surprised how fast storage can fill up, and you never want to fill a drive completely to the brim, as Bad Things can happen if you do.'

You may want to research the system requirements of basic kids games to see which of those games have Apple Silicon versions.

Here's a long related discussion https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256257745?sortBy=oldest_first

The Neo is kind of the starter Mac, but of course if your MBA is old then anything may be a step up.

I'll add that I see that my Mac with Sequoia (older OS versions typically don't need as much memory as the newer ones like the one that come with a Neo) and running a single browser as the only app, takes 7GB of RAM. A MacBook Neo comes with 8 GB and that's it for choices. That's ridiculous! You're short on RAM even before it's out of the box unless you only plan on running a single application at a time.

Basically a Neo is a glorified iPad (the processor is an Apple mobile device kind, not a Mac kind) with a keyboard, macOS, a few USB ports, and too little RAM to do much beyond writing a term paper or light web browsing. I would consider it a step down from any MacBook Air. The nice thing is the price point and if you have a 10 year old computer then anything is a step up. The RAM is a real killer and I wouldn't get anything with less than 24 GB RAM these days if you plan on keeping a computer for 5 years and use multiple applications. I mostly have a web browser running on my 24GB mini with maybe 4 light to medium weight other applications and it isn't unusual for a monitor I run to say I am using 70% RAM (so roughly 16 GB already). Oh, that's with Intelligence disabled too.

Re: “mostly have a web browser running on my 24GB mini with maybe 4 light to medium weight other applications and it isn't unusual for a monitor I run to say I am using 70% RAM (so roughly 16 GB already).”

While.I agree that 8 GB of RAM is on the small side these days, you need to be careful when interpreting Activity Monitor readouts. macOS is designed to put “unused” RAM to work holding.”Cached Files”, on the theory that RAM that is completely idle isn’t doing anything for you.

So once you have “enough” RAM, having more might only result in the Mac allocating an even larger amount, temporarily, for “Cached Files.”

That 2017 MacBook Air was the last one to have

• A non-Retina screen.
• An old-style Thunderbolt 2 port, with a Mini DisplayPort connector. Because Thunderbolt 3 – 5 live on the USB-C connector, and Thunderbolt 4 – 5 accessories are not backwards-compatible with Thunderbolt 2 hosts, your TB2 port is now useful mainly for its ability to double as a Mini DisplayPort.
• MagSafe 2.

That MacBook Air only came with 8 GB of RAM – but in the old days, macOS and applications did not make quite as many demands on RAM.

You can think of the MacBook Neo as being a mostly new and improved successor to the 12" Retina MacBook from 2017. (I say "mostly' because it is heavier, lacks a backlit keyboard, and cannot be ordered with 16 GB of RAM.)

The M4 and M5 MacBook Airs can/could be ordered with up to 32 GB of RAM. They have two full-featured USB-C ports with USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB4 40 Gbps, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 4, and charging support. They have MagSafe 3. They can drive two monitors, including very-high-resolution 5K/6K ones, whereas the Neo is limited to one external monitor with a maximum resolution of 4K.

Neither the Neo, nor recent Airs, have a built-in SDXC card slot like the one on your 2017 MacBook Air, but you can get small portable external readers.

Servant of Cats wrote:

Re: “mostly have a web browser running on my 24GB mini with maybe 4 light to medium weight other applications and it isn't unusual for a monitor I run to say I am using 70% RAM (so roughly 16 GB already).”

While.I agree that 8 GB of RAM is on the small side these days, you need to be careful when interpreting Activity Monitor readouts. macOS is designed to put “unused” RAM to work holding.”Cached Files”, on the theory that RAM that is completely idle isn’t doing anything for you.

So once you have “enough” RAM, having more might only result in the Mac allocating an even larger amount, temporarily, for “Cached Files.”

From Activity Monitor:

Physical Memory: 24.00 GB

Memory Used: 11.00 GB

Cached Files: 12.94 GB

Swap Used: O bytes

App Memory: 6.66 GB

Wired Memory: 2.03 GB

Compressed: 1.46 GB

My menu bar utility right now is saying the computer is using 42% RAM, which is probably referring to the 11 GB. Cached is listed separately. Usually the bar % is closer to 75%. It's low right now because I have a bunch of tabs in my browser that are present but I haven't fully loaded since I restarted my Mac. The only apps I have open right now are my browser and a small one using 300 MB memory.

I'm not trying to threadjack this into a discussion of memory, I'm just observing that I am sure glad I have 24 GB since I plan on using this Mac for another half decade at least. Maybe if I needed something, say for travel, that was more than an iPad but didn't want to drop another $1,000+ for a notebook then a Neo might fit the spot. Or if I had children that needed budget computers for basic school stuff and if one got lost then no big budget crisis.

Limnos wrote:

From Activity Monitor:

Physical Memory: 24.00 GB

Memory Used: 11.00 GB

Cached Files: 12.94 GB

Swap Used: O bytes

Those numbers suggest that for your workload, you would want at least 16 GB of RAM. I.e., a Neo is not for you.

You didn't post the color of the Memory Pressure graph, but that "Swap Used: 0 bytes" is great – it means that with 24 GB of RAM, your Mac has plenty of RAM for what it is doing, and at the time you grabbed the numbers, wasn't under any sort of memory pressure at all.

I'm not trying to threadjack this into a discussion of memory, I'm just observing that I am sure glad I have 24 GB since I plan on using this Mac for another half decade at least.

This is pretty much what I thought. Some of the answers or comments have been way too sophisticated for my knowledge.

What I use my MacBook for is.

Reading Streaming TV and Movies, basic spreadsheet and business info.

Emails. web searching and basic kids games.

This is all I require and at least 5 years of apple updates.

If the MacBook nano can do this I am satisfied.

Thank you.

Jen

shuwalows wrote:

This is pretty much what I thought. Some of the answers or comments have been way too sophisticated for my knowledge.

What I use my MacBook for is.

Reading Streaming TV and Movies, basic spreadsheet and business info.

Emails. web searching and basic kids games.

This is all I require and at least 5 years of apple updates.

If the MacBook nano can do this I am satisfied.

Thank you.

Jen

Yes. The MacBook Neo can do all that just fine. And yes, it should get macOS updates for 5 years and maybe a couple more of security patches.

The Neo’s processor and unified memory is far more capable than the 9 year old Intel processor used in the 2017 MacBook. The Neo is a much more capable (better) notebook than any base MacBook Air until about 2022/23 and the introduction of M2 processors.

Thank you this is good information.