MacBook Neo vs M5 Air - We were SHOCKED

MacBook Neo versus M5 MacBook Air. Should you spend the extra money? Well, we are going to compare everything so you can make the right choice. The first thing I'm going to do is unplug both of these because we have them charged to 100%. So, we're going to do a reallife battery comparison. This looks newer, nicer, thinner bezels, but I do like the light keyboard on the Neo. The Neo is the first MacBook in a long time that actually has a real clicking trackpad, but they made it pretty decent, but the trackpad on the Air is larger. It feels better with that magnetic touch. Now, as far as size, they are fairly similar, but the Neo is a little bit smaller in both dimensions and just ever so slightly thicker. It's nice and curvy on the edges, a little bit more so than the MacBook Air. And as far as the ports, well, the MacBook Air has that Mag Safe, which is so nice. So, technically, you have an additional one, and the ports are Thunderbolt instead of USB typeC, which gives you speeds that are much faster. And of course, the Neo has one port that is incredibly slow. Thankfully, they do give you a pop-up to make sure you don't connect SSD drives to it. I do like how the headphone jack is at the bottom left hand side on the Neo compared to on the top right, which it can get in the way. And as you see, we have two speakers that are sidefiring uh compared to a quad speaker system on the air. So, let's go ahead and compare that. Guys, this is really weird. The Neo has better spatial audio with the sidefiring speakers and the bass is actually better. It has really huge enclosures for the speakers inside. Now, the MacBook Air, the highs stand out more, but it has worse bass. And I know for you guys, you can't hear it as well because the Neo's audio setup is really different and hard to record, but let me know your thoughts. Now, as far as the displays, you guys could see the Air has a larger display. The resolution is slightly larger, but as far as detail, it's very similar. The Neo also misses out on True Tone for the white balance adjustment, and it just supports regular sRGB colors. It also doesn't have a notch like you get on the MacBook Air, which looks kind of ugly, but it allows for very thin bezels while having a high quality camera, which we will test. And the biggest difference is the contrast and those colors along with the anti-reflectivity coatings. The Neo looks great because it has less contrast and you get a lot more reflections compared to the MacBook Air screen. Even though it's still an LCD, the blacks look a lot deeper and I see way less reflection uh inside of it. You guys can see that difference as well. >> That's a massive difference. It's so great. >> It's a big difference. Honestly, this makes the air screen look like an OLED even though it's not. We did not expect this big of a difference. This is a 1080p webcam that's in the MacBook Neo. It is a new webcam that they put in. So, let me know how it looks and sounds. And this is the 1080p center stage camera that comes with the MacBook Air. So you guys could see Vimm stepped in and it went wider. Now it came out and it kind of cropped in on me. So let me know how this quality compares to the Neo and what you think of the microphone quality differences. I think my biggest disappointment is charging for the Neo. It only comes with a 20 watt charger, but even with faster chargers, the MacBook smokes it, being able to charge in less than 2 hours compared to about 4 hours with a 30 watt with the Neo. And with the M5 Air, if you forgot to charge it, you can charge to 50% in 26 minutes compared to about 2 hours on the Neo, which is just forever. It's too long. Now, speaking of that, before we start our performance test, let's look at the battery life here. 91% already on the Neo versus 96% on the MacBook Air. And we didn't even hit it hard yet. So, let's jump into that. Now, if you're going to be upgrading your MacBook, you need to get a protective sleeve like the Essence A34 or A35 from our sponsor TomTalk, giving you ultimate protection thanks to their patented corner armor that protects your MacBook against drops while being thin and lightweight. They also have handles for easy carry and pockets for charging accessories with the A35 giving you even more storage. The MacBook fits perfectly and the zippers keep it secure for ultimate protection. So, use the links below to order now. This is Blackmagic disc speed test to test out the SSDs. And oh my goodness gracious right here, guys. 6,775 read compared to 1598 on the Neo. That is insane. And as far as right, 6,434 compared to 1631. That's over four times faster. I can't believe the MacBook Air, the M5, is now this insanely fast. the Neo would be helped with that fast SSD because it only has eight gigs of RAM. So, it helped for swap compared to 16 as a base. So, with that said, let's go ahead and jump into CPU performance. And look at this, guys. I can't believe an Air has so much performance. 17,100 compared to 9,000. That's a difference of about 90%. So, almost double the multi-core performance. Now, as far as single core, we have about a 17% difference. So, not as big, the Neo is still really quick for web tasks. So, to test that, here is speedometer 3.1 for web-based applications and web browsing. Both are insanely quick. We have 50.5 compared to 58.5. And even the Neo beats out all of the Windows laptops. And next, let's test out Figma for web design. And this is a project brought to us by 500 Designs. One of the best design and marketing agencies in the US. And the MacBook Neo has been very, very quick and responsive when we're zooming in, loading high resolution images. It's crazy. Now, selecting 12 high resolution layers and exporting them. The Neo takes a minute and 58 seconds compared to a minute 37 for the MacBook Air. So, there is somewhat of a speed difference, but it's not absolutely crazy. And now we're going to run a few AI tests. The first one is going to be simple Geekbench AI right here. Let's go ahead and run that. All right, guys. This is a massive difference. 23,682 compared to 7,173. That's over three times faster. And with the M5, they got a massive architecture improvement with dedicated AI cores in there. And you guys could see that difference. And next, we're going to do ondevice image generation using draw things. And we're using this Pixel Wave Flux model. And the only thing I changed is setting it to five steps. And we're also using the same exact prompt as we did before. So, let's go ahead and see how long this takes here. And here are the results. That took a while. The M5 took a minute and 31 seconds compared to 6 minutes and 3 seconds. literally four times faster doing this AI modeling with the M5. That is a crazy difference. And now let's get into graphics, metal performance. Let's run this. And the A18 Pro in here has five graphics cores compared to 10 with the M5. And looking at these scores, it still shocks me how much graphics performance we have with the uh MacBook Air. over double compared to the Neo. So now let's see what the gaming performance is like. We have 3D Mark Steel Nomad Light in unlimited mode. So there's no difference for the resolution. And here we have 13.1 FPS on the Neo compared to 32.4. That's two and a half times better frames per second in terms of performance. I mean, this is getting to the point, guys, with some of these tests where, yeah, this machine might be double the price to buy it. Of course, you're going to get more RAM and other features, but the performance is becoming more than double. And now, let's hit this with some 3D rendering in Blender. The Neo surprised us compared to the M1 Air. So, this is the same party tug project right here. Let's go ahead and run it. This can use the ray tracing cores. I want to mention temperatures here. The Neo hit 102 almost right away. The MacBook Air is still at 74 C. Actually, just got done and dropped down. We're seeing a big trend. That's crazy. So, we're going to test out temps in just a sec. Okay, guys. The trend is continuing here. We have 2 minutes 49 seconds compared to 1 minute and 7 seconds. Almost three times faster with the M5 Air. And now, let's flip over to some different productivity. We have Xcode right here. And this is one where we actually were disappointed by the Neo in our last video. Once again, the Neo took a while here. 391 seconds compared to 202. So practically twice as fast with the M5 Air. And next we're here in Logic. We have done some track testing in the new Logic benchmark and the Neo can do 37 tracks. Not great. The M5 tracks it just did successfully. That is over three times more tracks. And that's a massive difference. Usually we'll see a 20% difference, you know, generationally, stuff like that. That is I don't want to keep saying crazy. What's another word? Shocking. That is shocking. And now getting into photo editing. We have Lightroom opened up right here. And just like yesterday, I was impressed how quick the Neo can flip through these edited raw images. Very nice. And now let's go ahead and export all 50 of these. And this is the test that really impressed us even with multitasking compared to the M1 Air. So if you guys haven't seen that video, watch it after this one. Guys, the MacBook already is done. It's flying in this. All right, guys. So, we have 2 minutes 30 seconds for the Neo, 46 seconds for the M5 Air. That's over three times quicker. That is an incredible difference in performance. And then of course, if you're going to be analyzing stuff in the background, if you're going to use the AI features like we saw in our AI test, it's a pretty massive difference. And now we're looking at video editing with Final Cut. And we used to say that the M1 Air was good enough for simple 4K editing, but now that's what the Neo is good enough for. The M1 or M5 Air now is so powerful that it could do a lot more. And if you guys look right here, same clip. We have 4K with video effects on here. Look how little GPU power has to be used on the M5 compared to on the Neo with the A18 Pro. It's using I don't know 90% of the graphics in order to be able to process this. Here it's what what is that 15 10% maybe. >> So if you have a bunch of titles, effects, multicam, the M5 is going to handle that. And now let's go ahead and export this 5minute project. All right guys, we have 2 minutes 52 seconds for the Neo went faster this time than last compared to 1 minute and 42 seconds. So not twice as fast, but it is getting there. And it's crazy how quick the M5 is even compared to like an M1 Max that you'd spend $3,500 on back in the day. And for our last test, we have Cinebench. We're going to push these to their limits. And with the Neo says multi-core can run up to 2.7 compared to 3.4, but I don't think we're going to even see that. So, let's go ahead and check this out and check out how fast and how much these thermal throttle right here. 23 almost 24 watts. Even peaked a little bit higher than that compared to five right now. Crazy. The core speeds are much higher. We have more cores as well on the M5 and it ended up hitting 102 very quickly. So, the max core on this one's at 106. So, it is running hotter, but both do run hot and they do start throttling down quick. Guys, the MacBook Air with the M5 is throttling like mad doing this test. Look at the performance cores how low they are. Way lower than the EC course. And even the the efficiency cores have also throttled down and now the wattage just dropped so much. This is more throttling than we've seen with previous MacBook Airs. And the crazy thing is the actual temp of the CPU now is 81° C. >> What >> max is 80 right here because the whole computer got so hot and and saturated with heat that it has to cool itself down. The Neo much cooler up here. That is crazy. So, let's check with the thermal camera here. This is the Neo. We have one little hot spot. 37ish over here. Look at the M5. Oh my goodness. 45 I saw. And the whole chassis is so much hotter if we're just comparing both of them. That is crazy. All right, we just got done here and the Neo's battery is almost out, but it did not throttle at the end. So, we are good on that. We have 1,334 for the Neo and 3,077 for the M5 Air. That's a difference of over two times about 2.3. Once again, a huge difference. And that is with all the throttling on the M5 chip and the small fanless chassis. I mean, massive difference right there. there. And I want to remind you guys, if you're doing stuff like photo editing and a lot of the other tasks we tested, you don't get this kind of throttling because it's not just 100% CPU all the time. And now I'm excited to check out the battery life after hours of testing, simple tests, and then harder ones. What kind of difference do we have? Well, the M5 Air was at 30% battery, just switched to 29% battery. And on the Neo, let's look at it. 3% battery. 3% guys. Thankfully, it didn't throttle at the end. That is a big difference. Vim, when have we had such a big difference with MacBooks? >> It's been a long time, dude. >> It's been a long time. Not only for battery, for a lot of these tests that we ran. Usually, there's an upgrade. You know, might have 10% 20 20% faster. When have we constantly seen two to three times faster performance when you really get into productivity? And I think that starts to answer our original question. Is the M5 MacBook Air worth the extra money compared to the Neo? And I don't think there's ever been a time where the answer has been absolutely yes. You're paying 500 bucks more if you want to have um you know, same amount of storage. When you count in the upgrade of the RAM that you had to pay for before, you can't do that on the Neo. The price difference is like 300 bucks more for all the extra features, all the extra performance. You can have multiple display outputs, higher resolution displays. You have the better almost everything on the system and consistently two to three times better performance with better battery life, dramatically better battery life and charging speed, which is also two to four times faster for fast charging, four times faster to 50% and twice as fast overall. I mean, it's crazy. The Neo is going to sell well. The Neo is for the people that would have never bought a MacBook cuz it was just unfathomable to spend $1,000 before, but now you can buy one, especially with the educational discount. But if you're anybody else, if you're watching this video, if you're investing for the long haul, paying the extra money on this system is insanely worth it. The best bang for the buck upgrade and extra money spent for what you get is right here with the M5 Air. You're not spending 500 bucks, 800 bucks to get 20, 30% more performance. Double to triple the performance. So, let me know what you guys thought down in the comments section below. This is crazy. Click that subscribe button to see more amazing comparisons that we have coming out that are going to be fun to watch. Check out one of those videos right over there. This has been Max and I'll see you in the next

Apple's MacBook Neo is NOT the best value MacBook in 2026. The M5 MacBook Air just SHOCKED us! Buy the TomToc Essence A34 Laptop Sleeve (10% OFF TOMTOCA34A35) ➡ https://amzn.to/4ricJ0B Buy the TomToc Essence A35 Laptop Sleeve (10% OFF TOMTOCA34A35) ➡ https://amzn.to/4sB12TQ Buy the MacBook Neo on Amazon ➡ https://geni.us/qlyh Buy the M5 MacBook Air on Amazon ($50 OFF) ➡ https://geni.us/lGA2s0j App we use for Temp & Fan Speed Monitoring ➡ https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/index.php?fpr=maxtech Timestamps ⬇️ MacBook Neo vs M5 MacBook Air - 00:00 Design Differences - 0:18 Size Comparison & Ports - 0:38 Speaker Comparison - 1:22 Display Comparison - 2:15 Anti-Reflectivity & Contrast - 2:42 Webcam & Mics Compared - 3:20 Charging Speed & Battery Life - 3:46 First Battery Life Update - 4:15 You need a MacBook Sleeve - 4:32 SSD Speed Test - 5:00 Geekbench 6 CPU - 5:34 Speedometer 3.1 Benchmark - 6:00 Figma Web Design - 6:16 Geekbench AI Test - 6:50 Text-to-Image AI Generation - 7:16 Geekbench 6 Metal GPU - 7:51 3DMark Steel Nomad Light - 8:13 Blender 3D Video Rendering - 8:45 Xcode Programming - 9:24 Logic Pro Music Production - 9:45 Lightroom Classic Phot Editing - 10:15 Final Cut Pro Video Editing - 11:05 Cinebench 2026 Stress Test - 12:13 Thermal Throttling Tested - 13:38 Battery Life Results - 14:39 Which MacBook should YOU Buy? - 15:25 Who should spend $400 more? - 16:22 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Shop on Amazon ➡ https://geni.us/wB2mWqd Shop on B&H ➡ https://bhpho.to/2kfoI34 Shop on Adorama ➡ https://bit.ly/2R7qezq 10% off unlimited yearly music licensing on Soundstripe (what I use for all my videos) use coupon code "Max" here: http://soundstripe.grsm.io/e/6lv If you enjoy our content please consider supporting us on Patreon. Even $2 a month helps us make more and better content for you! https://www.patreon.com/MaxYuryev -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- PRIVACY POLICY and FULL DISCLOSURE: °Max Tech is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com °Max Tech is a participant in the B&H Photo Video affiliate program that provides an advertising commission if you purchase through our links. °If you purchase something from our affiliate links will get a small commission with no extra cost to you. This makes it possible for us to make more videos. Thank you! °We DO NOT collect, store, use, or share any data about you. -~-~~-~~~-~~-~-