The all-new MacBook Neo

0:00Welcome to 95 Mac Daily for Thursday, March 5th, 2026. I'm your host Chance Miller. We are sponsored this week by BenQ. Leading off today to round out its week of announcements, Apple has officially unveiled the new MacBook Neo. This is the widely rumored lower-cost MacBook, and it's called MacBook Neo. The name is meant to designate that this is an entirely new, completely re-engineered addition to the Mac lineup. MacBook Neo has a 13-inch screen with a liquid retina display, 2408 x 1506 resolution, with 500 nits of brightness, support for 1 billion colors, but no support for the wide P3 color gamut. It's powered by the A18 Pro chip, which is the same chip from the iPhone 16 Pro, with a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU paired with a 16-core neural engine.

1:00It comes with 8GB of unified memory, and starts with 256GB of storage. In terms of battery life, Apple says you can expect up to 16 hours on a single charge. In terms of design, it's made from an aluminum enclosure in four colors, blush, indigo, silver and citrus, and these colors also extend to the keyboard, which is color matched to the shade of aluminum of the laptop. Apple calls it the most colorful MacBook yet. It weighs 2.7 pounds, which is the same as the MacBook Air. In terms of connectivity, there are two USB-C ports, one with USB-C three speeds and one with USB-2 speeds, plus a headphone jack. There's no support for magsay for any other connectivity options. Bluetooth is Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi 6E. You'll find a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, dual microphone with directional beam forming,

2:01and dual side firing speakers with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos support. In terms of performance, Apple says MacBook Neo is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks like web browsing compared to the best-selling PC in this price class. For on-device AI workloads, Apple says performance is up to three times faster, while photo editing tasks are up to two times faster. Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternis called the MacBook Neo a laptop only Apple could create and said there is, quote, simply no other laptop like it. The pricing, however, is where the MacBook Neo really shines. It starts at $599 or $499 for education. There are, however, some limitations. That base 599 model does not have touch ID on the keyboard and only comes with 256GB of storage. The second tier is 699 and it offers touch ID on the keyboard and 512GB.

3:05There are no options to upgrade RAM beyond 8GB, there's no Thunderbolt support, external display support is limited to 4K at 60Hz, there's no true tone support for the display, the trackpad does not support force touch, and the keyboard does not have backlighting. There are a handful of other compromises compared to other Macs in Apple's laptop lineup, but ultimately all of the compromises seem mostly reasonable enough considering that 599 price point. The new MacBook Neo is available to order now with the first orders arriving next Wednesday March 11th. We are sponsored this week by BenQ, the makers of Mac Ready monitors designed to look just like your Mac. BenQ's Mac colors technology makes the MA series look identical to your Macs built in display, with the same vibrancy, the same color accuracy, and no fiddling required. You also get USB-C one cable connectivity so your Mac charges and connects with a single

4:05cord, plus BenQ's display pilot 2 software for quick control of brightness, volume, resolution. The stand is fully adjustable with height, swivel, tilt, and even a full 90 degree pivot, and the Nano Gloss panel delivers that premium glossy look that Mac users love. You can check out the full lineup including the gorgeous MA27 OUP by hitting the link in the show notes. BenQ is also running a giveaway with no purchase necessary. There must be 18 or older and a resident of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, or Canada excluding Quebec. Full details are in the show notes. My thanks to BenQ for sponsoring the show. In other news today we have more details on the studio display and the studio display XDR. These are the two new studio display models that Apple announced on Tuesday. While Apple didn't say anything about it, according to code evidence, these new studio displays are powered by the A19 chip.

5:07The base studio display has the plain A19, and the studio display XDR has the A19 Pro. Both of these are significant updates compared to the A13 chip in the initial studio display from 2022, but that said it's not entirely clear why the new studio display would need an A19 in the first place. As we talked about on Tuesday, the base studio display is basically the same as its predecessor, just with Thunderbolt 5 connectivity and updates to the speakers and the camera. The studio display XDR of course is far more capable and perhaps there are ways it utilizes the A19 Pro. We also have more details on compatibility for the studio display XDR. Apple says the XDR is compatible with all Macs powered by Apple Silicon. That dates back to the M1 MacBook Air from 2020. However, support for the studio display is 120Hz refresh rate is more limited.

6:07Apple says that if you have a Mac powered by the M1, the M1 Pro, the M1 Max, the M1 Ultra, the M2 or M3, you can use the studio display at up to a 60Hz refresh rate. All other features are supported except that high refresh rate. You can also connect the new MacBook Neo to the studio display, but it'll be scaled to 4K at 60Hz, so no support for 5K. Finally, if you plan to pair your studio display XDR with an iPad, Apple says the following models are compatible. The iPad Pro with M4 and M5, the third to sixth generation 12.9 inch iPad Pro, the first to fourth generation 11 inch iPad Pro, the M2, the M3 and the M4 iPad Air, and the fifth generation iPad Air. However, only the M5 iPad Pro supports studio display XDR at 120Hz. All other models will be capped at 60Hz.

7:09That wraps up another episode of 9 to 5 Mac daily. As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on 9 to 5 Mac.com, follow along with me on threads at Chance H Miller, and we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode of 9 to 5 Mac daily.