Apple just released its cheapest laptop ever. The MacBook Neo costs $599 (affiliate link) comes in fun colors, runs real macOS, and can run Vellum, the number one typesetting tool for authors.
Should you buy one?
I’ve been testing the Neo for the past week, and the answer is more complicated than you might think. This laptop is impressive in some ways but frustrating in others. Whether it’s right for you depends on what you use your computer to do, because authors do more than just type words into a word processor. If that’s all we did, the Neo would be more than enough.
I’ll walk you through exactly what matters and what doesn’t when buying a laptop, and I’ll give you my specific recommendations at every price point, including an honest review of the Neo, which I bought specifically to review for this episode.
What doesn’t matter when buying a laptop?
This is where a lot of authors waste a lot of money.
CPU and GPU
This is what computer companies focus on and what tech reviewers obsess over, and it has almost no impact on authors. Computers could run word processors two decades ago, and CPUs now are thousands of times faster than they were then.
A faster GPU tends to only matter when exporting video, which authors rarely do. When they do, waiting a few extra minutes is not worth spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The MacBook Neo uses an A18 Pro chip, which is the same chip in the iPhone 16 Pro, and it runs all of the word processors just fine.
Extra Cores
More expensive CPUs have more cores, but that doesn’t matter if author software can’t use them. Sure, Adobe Photoshop will use every core it can get, but most authors don’t use Photoshop.
Most authors use Canva or ChatGPT’s image generator, and both of those are cloud-based and don’t need extra cores. Don’t waste your money on cores you can’t use. There’s no reason for an author to buy an M5 Pro or M5 Max chip from Apple. You’re better off spending your money on something else, and this is still true even if you plan to get into podcasting. I don’t think authors need a MacBook Pro.
Touchscreen
Touchscreens seem like fun, but a smudged screen doesn’t help you write faster. The fastest way to use your computer is with your keyboard, or if you have to, with a keyboard and a mouse. The slowest way is to touch the screen. Your hands block your view, they smudge the display, and all that movement between screen and keyboard slows you down. Every temptation to touch your screen is a temptation to reduce your productivity.
AI
There’s a lot of marketing hype around AI, and every laptop maker is smearing that word all over their advertising. It doesn’t matter. All of the best models run in the cloud, and even the slowest Chromebook can run Grok just as fast as the fastest MacBook Pro. This is also true with the Patron Toolbox, Claude, and all the other AIs that matter.
You’re not going to be running an LLM on your machine. Even if you spent $10,000 on a computer to run a local LLM, it still wouldn’t be as good as one you could get for a $30-a-month cloud subscription.
What should you avoid when buying a laptop?
Refurbished Laptops
“Refurbished” is marketing-speak for an old, worn battery. Batteries degrade over time. Think of it like tread on your tires. Even on fancy tires, the tread will wear down just as your laptop battery will wear down with every charge. Old batteries make refurbished laptops not worth the discount.
A refurbished desktop, on the other hand, can be a great investment because desktops don’t have batteries that wear out.
Third-Party Sellers
Buy directly from the company. Buy from Apple, or if you’re on Amazon, look for “sold by” and “shipped by Amazon.” Avoid listings that say “sold by Acme Computers, shipped by Amazon.”
Amazon does a really poor job policing third-party sellers for fraud, and if you’re not careful, you can accidentally buy a computer that looks the same but is actually a much older, slower machine than you thought.
What actually matters when buying a laptop?
RAM
This is the big one. RAM determines how many applications and tabs you can run at the same time before things start to slow down. Think of RAM as counter space in a kitchen. Every four gigabytes is like one square of counter space. The first four gigs go to the fridge and the microwave, the non-negotiables you need just to have a functioning kitchen. So if you only have eight gigs, you only have one square of counter space to work with. You’re constantly putting things on the counter, taking things off, putting different things on, taking them off again.
Now imagine a computer with 16 gigs of RAM. That’s like having three squares of counter space plus the fridge and microwave. You can keep your blender and food processor out. You can keep your cutting board out and still have counter space left over for meal prep. Authors love having lots of Chrome tabs open. They love having a big kitchen, and that means needing lots of RAM.
One difference between Mac and Windows is how well they perform under memory pressure. Windows really slows down and will often crash when it’s short on memory, whereas macOS is really good at putting things away quietly behind the scenes and getting them out when you need them.
Think of it as having a kitchen assistant who’s constantly clearing your counter of things you don’t need. This is why an Apple computer will run better on less RAM than a Windows machine will. I recommend 16 gigs of RAM for Mac and 32 gigs for Windows.
That said, the MacBook Neo has only eight gigs of RAM, which is why I wanted to buy and review it. I wanted to see whether a machine could still be performant in 2026 with only eight gigs of RAM (see my conclusions below).
Battery Life
A long-lasting battery allows you to write at a picnic table or a coffee shop instead of being stuck at home. This can really transform your writing.
Screen Brightness
If you have a bright enough screen, you can write at a park, and writing outside is so good for your mental health and the quality of your writing.
If you can hear birds chirping, if you can be in nature while writing a scene that takes place in nature, that scene will be more vibrant. Your writing will be better, you will be healthier, and you might even get a little suntan. Make sure to get a screen that’s bright enough to take outside.
Software Compatibility
Every author should ask whether a laptop actually runs the software they plan to use. It doesn’t matter how fast your computer is if it can’t run the software you need. The only kind of computer that can run all of the software an author would want to use is a Mac.
Windows cannot run all author software. Vellum, the number one typesetting tool for authors, doesn’t run on Windows. If you’re on Windows, there’s no good way to turn a Word doc into an EPUB file for Kindle. Windows authors often get snookered into hiring a hybrid publisher who will charge them thousands of dollars to do what a Mac user can do with a few clicks in Vellum. In terms of compatibility, Apple is the most compatible, Windows is next, followed by Linux, and Chromebook is in dead last place.
Only an Apple computer can run 100% of the software, which is why the vast majority of professional authors use a Mac.
Storage
Word documents don’t use a lot of storage, but you have to account for storage needed for cover files, PDFs, EPUBs, and possibly audio recordings you did for research. Your drive might fill up. My rule of thumb is to look at how much storage space you’re using right now and double it for your next computer. If you plan to start a podcast, add another 500 gigabytes.
Why do most authors use Apple computers?
Some Windows users insist their computer works fine, often out of ignorance. They’ve never tried an Apple computer and don’t realize why it’s better.
Here are eight reasons most professionals use Apple for writing.
Compatibility
Only the Mac can run all the software an author needs.
Ease of Use
It’s easy to switch audio inputs on a Mac. If you’re doing a podcast and you want to plug in your microphone and switch the audio input from your built-in mic to an external one, on the Mac it’s easy, and the process hasn’t changed in over a decade.
On Windows, there are three different settings pages that control your audio, and the interface changes with every version of Windows. It’s confusing, and everything about Windows is like this. Unnecessarily complicated.
Reliability
Apple computers have the best build quality in the industry. While some Windows laptops match Apple’s quality, they also have to match Apple’s pricing.
Privacy
Windows 11 takes screenshots every few seconds to track what you’re doing on your computer. This is a feature called Recall, where they track and store everything you’re doing and then promise not to do anything with that data. Will they compensate you if that data is compromised in a security breach? No. What will happen if it turns out they were secretly training AI on your computer use? Probably nothing. What can you do if they change their terms of service to give themselves permission to train on all the data they’ve been collecting? You can switch to a Mac, which you can do right now.
No Advertising
Windows puts advertising in the operating system you paid for. This isn’t a free, ad-supported operating system. They put ads in the OS you paid for. Your attention is your most valuable asset. Why fight your own operating system for it?
They’re also trying to shape your understanding of the world by shoving curated news headlines in front of you, which I don’t appreciate. There’s a lot of power in choosing which news you show somebody. Even Apple does this to a lesser degree, but Windows is far worse and monetizes it.
Battery Life
Your typical Apple machine lasts a lot longer on its battery. The MacBook Air can get 18 hours, which means you treat your laptop more like a phone. You charge it at night and just use it wherever you are. You know a Windows user because they always have their charger in their laptop bag.
Lower Lifetime Costs
Macs last longer and require less ongoing maintenance, which makes them cheaper in the long run. It’s cheaper to buy a computer that will last you longer, even if it costs a little more upfront, because you’re not having to buy a new computer all the time. And it’s not just the money on the computer but the cost of getting the new one set up.
Continuity Camera
If you have an iPhone and a Mac, you can use your iPhone as a webcam with a simple $20 mount. This gives you video quality comparable to a $1,000 professional camera setup.
Is the MacBook Neo a good purchase for authors?
This laptop is the cheapest new Mac Apple has ever sold, even adjusting for inflation. But to get the price down, they had to make some sacrifices. Let me start with what I really liked.
The keyboard feels great.
This is one of the areas where it’s so much better than a Chromebook or a cheap Windows machine. A good, responsive keyboard really makes a difference, especially when your job is literally typing words.
The price is right.
At $599, there’s nothing else like the Neo (affiliate link) in the Mac lineup.
The screen is excellent.
The MacBook Neo is twice as bright as most Chromebooks and Windows computers in the same price point, which means you can take it to a park. I tested this. I went out to a park, sat under a pavilion on a day without a single cloud in the sky, and I was able to use the computer with no problem. It passes the park test. As long as you’re in the shade, it works just fine.
It was surprisingly fast for single-task actions.
Safari was fast. I’d forgotten just how responsive it is. It’s not quite as powerful as Chrome, which is why I don’t use it, but the Neo is tempting me to get back into Safari.
What didn’t I like about the Neo?
No keyboard backlight.
This was surprisingly irritating, especially because our house has a lot of soft, indirect lighting, which made the keys tricky to see. Depending on where you work and how bright your environment is, the lack of a keyboard backlight might be a real issue.
It slows down when multitasking.
The more apps you have running and the more tabs you have open, the slower things get.
The low RAM pushes you into Apple’s native app ecosystem.
Apple spends more time optimizing their apps to run on low memory than competing software does. Apple Music uses less RAM than Spotify. Safari uses less RAM than Chrome. Apple Passwords uses less RAM than 1Password. iCloud uses less RAM than Dropbox.
Speaking of Dropbox, the Neo really can’t run it. I was testing the Neo and really liked it, then I installed Dropbox and hated it because the computer ground to a halt. You’d think Dropbox would be a key addition given the Neo’s limited hard drive space, but it just needs more memory than the Neo can supply. The whole computer slowed to a crawl with Dropbox running in the background. I uninstalled Dropbox and suddenly started liking the Neo again.
Apple’s iCloud is fast and can sync files between your Macs. It’s not as good at sharing files with a team, but it’s far faster and lighter.
The battery is good but not great.
This comes back to RAM again. When you’re constantly swapping things on that counter space back to the hard drive, all that strain uses up the battery faster than a MacBook Air that isn’t using swap space as often. Apple’s 16-hour battery life claim is technically accurate, but in the real world, if you’re running a lot of apps and using swap disk space, expect it to fall short. Whereas the 16-hour claim on the MacBook Air really does seem to be 16 hours. You use your computer all day and still have 50% battery left.
Who is Apple targeting with the Neo?
Some people use Windows but still have AirPods, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch. If that’s you, this is going to be a really easy purchase. Apple’s iMessage lets you respond to text messages on your laptop. Your Apple Watch will unlock the Neo. Your AirPods will sound great on it, and your iPad can work as a wireless second monitor while you’re on the go.
This is partly why I don’t think you need a big screen laptop. If you want more screen real estate, buying a $300 iPad and putting it next to your laptop would be better than a larger laptop screen. Two screens give you more space than one slightly bigger screen.
How did the Neo perform in real-world app testing?
I created a stress-test document I call the “Doom Doc,” a 250,000-word document containing the last 100 to 150 episodes of the Novel Marketing podcast. I opened it in every major writing application. During all tests, I was also running Descript, my podcast video recorder, which was consuming almost 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. Real-world performance without Descript running would be better than what I saw.
Watch my demo on YouTube to see the actual performance of the Mac Neo.
Scrivener was the most impressive. Super responsive, using only 224 megabytes of RAM. It’s an efficient app.
Vellum ran great, using only 210 megabytes. It was fast while scrolling. Even running Vellum and Scrivener together, the Neo still had memory to spare.
Atticus was slower to load. Atticus is a Chromium wrapper, meaning it runs inside Chrome rather than as a native Mac app. I saw some lag while scrolling, and Atticus used about a gigabyte of RAM total, roughly four to five times more than Vellum and Scrivener combined. Running all three apps together pushed memory into the yellow. The big advantage of Atticus is that it runs on everything, but the trade-off is that running inside Chrome isn’t memory-efficient.
Microsoft Word handled the Doom Doc well. Scrolling with the trackpad was a little glitchy, but grabbing the scrollbar and moving through the document was fast. Word used about 289 megabytes of RAM, far less than Atticus.
Pages scrolled much smoother than Word and came in at 313 megabytes.
iA Writer loaded slowly at first but ran quickly once the document was in memory, using only 150 megabytes. Another fast, lean word processor.
Google Docs in Chrome was even less efficient than Atticus, using 500 megabytes to a gigabyte depending on the document. Still workable, but heavier.
For actual word processing, for writing or editing a book, the Neo is great. All the word processors work. The bottleneck isn’t word processing; it’s how many other things you’re running alongside it.
Safari with multiple tabs ran well alongside a word processor. I loaded up several tabs including Wikipedia and was still in the green on memory. But adding more apps pushed things into the yellow. Once you’re in the yellow in Activity Monitor, you start seeing the beach ball more often.
Claude was very memory-efficient, using less than 200 megabytes. Grok and other AI apps also ran quickly without using much memory.
Canva ran just fine. Snappy, responsive, easy to zoom and edit. This is one of the reasons I don’t recommend the MacBook Pro for authors. The kind of software authors use doesn’t demand that much power. If the Neo can run Canva, the MacBook Air can run it even better. Canva used about a gigabyte total.
Hindenburg (the audio recording software I recommend for audiobook narration) ran fine on the Neo. Just keep in mind that the Neo doesn’t have a lot of hard drive space, so it can’t hold many hours of audio. If you’re podcasting, I don’t recommend the Neo at all. If you do go with it, definitely get the larger 512-gigabyte version.
How did the Neo handle heavy multitasking?
I opened Vellum, Scrivener, Microsoft Word, Pages, Atticus, Spotify, Discord, and multiple Safari tabs all at once with the Doom Doc loaded in each word processor. Memory pressure grew steadily, pushing into the yellow. Switching between tabs got slower. There was a slight delay on every click.
For someone used to working with plenty of memory, that delay gets irritating. Personally, I want more memory on my machines. But it works. We were still operating with all those apps and tabs open. Not all of them loaded instantly. Discord had issues. Atticus took a while. But it didn’t crash.
It’s almost impossible to get the Neo to crash because of memory issues, thanks to how efficient macOS memory management is. I’d much rather have 8 gigs with a Mac than 16 gigs on a PC. You need almost twice as much memory on a PC to get equivalent performance.
The key to using the Neo as a fast, snappy computer is doing one thing at a time, maybe two. Web browsing alone feels snappy. The networking chip is actually faster than my MacBook Pro. Pages load quickly. Where this laptop falls apart is when you’re trying to run a lot of applications all at once.
How did the camera and microphone perform?
As an author, you could use the Neo for a guest interview or for recording a short video. I’d always recommend using a real microphone and potentially your iPhone as your camera via Continuity Camera. With a $20 mount to lift the iPhone off the screen and a $100 Q2U microphone, you get a solid podcasting setup for $120 in upgrades, assuming you already have an iPhone.
You can find all my podcast and microphone recommendations at PodcastParts.com.
What’s the verdict on the MacBook Neo for authors?
This is a surprisingly good machine for the money. Would I personally use it? No. I need more RAM. But I think it’s a great pick for a Mac desktop user who occasionally needs a laptop while working away from the desk. It’s 100% better than that cheap Acer you’ve been eyeing on Amazon.
There’s a lot to be said for pairing a Mac Mini desktop, which is more powerful but not portable, with a MacBook Neo laptop. You get the best of both worlds at a bargain price, since both are really affordable. And having two computers means you always have a backup if something happens.
This is the ultimate coffee-shop, go-to-the-park, do-some-writing computer. Throw it in your bag. It doesn’t need a charger, and you just type away all day long.
It’s also a great option for a PC user who’s sold on Windows but wants a cheap way to use Vellum. For Windows users who aren’t ready to make the switch but still want to use Vellum, this is your jam. The MacBook Neo runs Vellum beautifully.
In short, this is a good second computer and a decent primary computer if that’s all you can afford. If I only had $599 to spend on a computer, I would buy a Neo. But if you can afford a MacBook Air, you won’t regret spending the extra cash for the better machine.
Also, if you can wait, I suspect the Neo 2 will run the A19 Pro chip. That chip has 12 gigabytes of RAM instead of eight. Since macOS uses about four gigs for itself, going from four gigs of usable RAM to eight is effectively doubling it. That’s a huge improvement. If you can wait for the Neo 2, I would. But the Neo won’t be out until next year or the year after, and the current Neo is a shockingly good computer for the price.
Thomas’s Official Laptop Recommendations for 2026
For Most Authors: 13″ M4 MacBook Air 16GB RAM & 256GB SSD (Affiliate Link)
It’s the same computer I recommended last year. It’s faster than the Neo and not that much more expensive. As I’m recording this, it’s only $899 on Amazon, and it’s twice as fast. It has 16 gigabytes of RAM, a better battery, a backlit keyboard, a much faster chip, and it’s just a really solid device. It’s only $300 more than the Neo, and it does go on sale from time to time. I’ve seen it as cheap as $750 on Black Friday.
Make sure to buy it new. If Apple stops making this computer, don’t buy it used. A new computer is always better than a used or refurbished one because that battery ages over time.
For Podcasters: 13-inch M5 MacBook Air with 1 TB of Storage at $1,299 (affiliate link)
Podcasters need the bigger hard drive, which is also helpful for audio recording and video creation. Writing books doesn’t use much storage, but audio and video do.
The bigger hard drive also gives you a slightly faster M5 chip. You don’t need a Pro or Max chip for podcasting, YouTubing, or audiobook recording. None of the apps that authors use really need those extra cores. Many of them can’t even use them. Even the ones that can, like Descript, show a negligible difference because Descript does its intense work in the cloud.
For Windows Users: Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13.8-inch, 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD (affiliate link)
It runs the Snapdragon X Plus, an ARM-based chip. That’s what you want in a Windows computer. ARM-based chips give you comparable battery life. When I was criticizing Windows for having bad battery life, that’s the x86 chips. If you want Mac-like battery performance, ARM chips will deliver it. This model has 32 gigabytes of RAM and a 1TB SSD hard drive.
It’s not cheap, but it will do almost everything you need. It still has the privacy concerns and bugginess of Windows 11, and can’t run Vellum. But if you’re locked into Windows, this is the laptop I recommend.
Chromebooks: Don’t
This is my first year not recommending a Chromebook . The MacBook Neo killed the Chromebook for authors. At $599, you’re way better off getting a real Mac that runs real software with a 16-hour battery and an aluminum body.
A Chromebook can’t run Vellum, can’t run Scrivener natively, has limited office functionality, and can’t really run anything but Atticus and Chrome. I don’t see any reason for an author to buy a Chromebook in 2026.
Bottom Line
For most authors, I recommend buying the best MacBook Air you can afford. As I record this, the M4 is in the sweet spot for maximum bang for your buck. If you can’t afford a MacBook Air, the Neo is a surprisingly solid budget option (affiliate link).
You could buy a Neo now and get a Mac Mini next year if you need more performance. That Neo will continue to work as a great coffee-shop computer for years to come. It doesn’t have a single moving part, so it will keep working for word processing for a long time.
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