The $599 MacBook Neo fine print: RAM limits, USB-C trade-offs, and Touch ID tiers

Apple just announced the new MacBook Neo, its most affordable Mac laptop by a lot. To achieve the $599 starting price, the new MacBook Neo makes a few compromises along the way. These are some you should be aware of when considering the MacBook Neo.

You can upgrade storage and add Touch ID, but there’s only one RAM amount

At $599, MacBook Neo comes with 256GB storage.

That’s the same amount of storage that Apple put inside the $999 M4 MacBook Air before doubling the base SSD size and raising the price of the M5 MacBook Air.

For $100 more, MacBook Neo comes with 512GB storage and adds Touch ID.

However, there’s no option to add more RAM to MacBook Neo. Both price configurations are stuck with 8GB RAM.

Up until just over a year ago, Apple started most of its Macs with just 8GB RAM, but the company eventually doubled the base offering to 16GB.

The new MacBook Neo brings us back to 8GB, but for a price that’s hard to debate. Customers who need more RAM will need to look to the MacBook Air instead.

MacBook Neo has two USB-C ports with different speeds, and no MagSafe charging

MacBook Neo has two USB-C ports for charging and data, but the two ports are not exactly equal.

One USB-C port offers USB 2 speeds (up to 480Mb/s) while the other offers faster USB 3 speeds (up to 10Gb/s) and DisplayPort. The USB-C ports are not labeled on the machine, but the back port is the superior of the two.

Like the M1 MacBook Air that Apple kept around as a budget machine exclusively through Walmart for a while, the MacBook Neo does not have MagSafe charging.

Also like that discontinued laptop, the MacBook Neo is only capable of connecting to a single external display.

That was a sore spot for the M1 MacBook Air because the Intel MacBook Air that it replaced could support multiple external displays, but it shouldn’t be a big deal for the MacBook Neo.

What do you think of these compromises? Does the $599 starting price (or $499 for education) make these trade-offs worth it?

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