MacBook Neo vs M1 Air - Expectations BLOWN Away!

Does the new MacBook Neo replace the legendary M1 MacBook Air? Well, there are actually some downsides and some unique features that make this an incredible product that is going to be amazing. So, in this video, I will let you guys know all of those differences. Right away, you guys can see a major difference in design. We have the all white keyboard here uh compared to this darker look. Now, if I go ahead and close these down, you guys could see that we also have a size difference. The Air is wider and longer in each dimension, but the weight does stay the same. And one thing that's noticeable are the sharp edges on the M1 MacBook Air compared to the Neo, which has these super rounded soft edges that feel really nice. I love that the ports and the headphone jack is on the left hand side and that they move the port down lower. And because of that, you're not going to have a headphone cable in the way where your hands are. So, that is awesome. But, I will be honest, I still love the iconic wedge shape that makes it more comfortable for your hands. Now, here the edge isn't too bad, but it's a little bit higher. Now, the next thing I want to touch on is the keyboard. I think the Neo actually feels a little bit more clicky. It feels better. Uh, but the trackpad, even though they made a whole new design, this is not a magnetic force trackpad, it feels good. The magnetic one still feels nicer and more premium to me. Now, on the inside of the Neo, the speaker enclosures are absolutely massive, and I really like how the design of the speaker cutouts on the sides look. Whereas with the M1 Air, we have these grills and it faces up. So, I'm really curious to hear how the speakers compare. Let's jump into it. >> Somewhere unfamiliar. Bring me back to where we started. >> Wow, guys. I don't know what you guys heard and picked up. Uh, but to me, the Neo sounds a lot better. I don't know how they managed to get that much bass out of the same two speaker setup in both. It's not like it has four or six speakers. Now, the Air is louder, but it does not sound better. And with the Neo, we have uh the side speakers, which make it more immersive, uh, which is really, really nice. Now, I'm still shocked that you can buy a Neo for $599 or even $499 with the .edu prices. The M1 Air launched at $9.99 and years later you could buy it for $6.99 new. Now, $427 used on Amazon, refurbished. Actually, I'll link that down below. Uh, but that is years later and who wants to buy an old machine? Not everybody does. So, the pricing is absolutely incredible and they are going to sell millions and millions of these. So, where's the cost cutting? Well, the ports are the first thing. And even though both of these have two ports, these do not support Thunderbolt like you get with the almost 6-year-old MacBook Air. And one of these is only USB 2 in 2026. When we tested it with an SSD, the speed was so much slower than using the correct port. Thankfully, you get a little popup that tells you that. But with the M1 Air, you can use a Thunderbolt drive. That will be over 2,000 megabytes a second. Guys, I'm already seeing a difference in the displays, but I'll cover that in just a bit. I wanted to run Blackmagic disc speed tests because this is using iPhone storage. as far as the uh chip that's in here. And look at our M1 Air. Wow, we have 2,927 read compared to the Neo's,587. Yes, that's twice as slow. Now for right, 2432 compared to 1,553. And yes, this is actually the 512. You guys could see the Touch ID sensor right there. So, you don't get any speed improvement bumping that up. And even though this is kind of disappointing, when Apple launched the M2 and the M3 MacBook Air, they also had speeds similar to this, then they later fixed it, but it's still crazy to see. And another downside is the charging. The Neo ships with a 20 watt iPhone charger. It can accept up to 30, but the M1 Air came with a 30 watt and accepted up to 45. And from what we could tell, the Neo is going to take over 4 hours to charge. and around four with a 30 compared to about two and a half to three. So that is some slow charging. Another thing I noticed or actually didn't notice is the webcam. It is so tiny here uh compared to the one on the MacBook. So let's compare it. This is a 720p webcam on the M1 Air. So take a look at the quality and the sound of my voice. And this is the new 1080p webcam in the Neo, which is not a center stage camera. So, does this look better and sound better than the M1 Air? Let me know down below. Getting into displays, the M1 Air actually has a slightly higher resolution, slightly larger screen, and we have the squared off edges compared to the rounded ones. The Neo also does not have true tone, but to my eyes, it seemed like the Neo looked better, more contrast, but looking at this video now, I don't think so. Uh, we have better contrast on the M1. It supports P3 colors. Um, and it has less reflectivity just looking at my face on both of them. Wow, I did not expect that. The only advantage is brightness because the Neo does have 500 nits of brightness. So, it has a little bit more pop in those highlights. And I really noticed it looking at web pages where you have a lot of white. It's just more pleasant, nicer to the eyes compared to the 400 nits of the M1 Air. Now, what about performance? Can this iPhone chip, the A18 Pro, compete with the M1? Well, I have Geekbench opened up right here. But the Neo only has two performance cores and four efficiency compared to four and four here. And look at this, guys. We have 8,990 multi-core on the Neo compared to 8,751 on the M1 Air. So, with only two performance cores, it still beats it out. That is awesome. Now, on the single core side, the Neo is almost 50% faster. 3,572. That is a big difference and that will make a difference in your use. This is speedometer 3.1 and it tests out how snappy and responsive your system is doing web browsing along with web- based applications. And wow guys, we just got a score of 50.1. That is extremely impressive. That is faster than any Windows laptop that you can buy. Smoking the M1 Air by 43% or so. So, this system, the Neo, is going to be so quick and responsive in web applications. And speaking of web, this is Figma, a web design app. And this is brought to us by 500 Designs, one of the best design and marketing agencies in the US. I'm going to check responsiveness here with the M1 Air. That was pretty quick. I wonder if they made some updates. I know on the Neo, we tried it out in the last video and it was really, really good. Like I didn't even see it load right there. And now let's select these 12 highresolution layers and export them. And the results are very close. We have 158 on the Neo compared to 2 minutes and 4 seconds. So the Neo does beat it out, but not by that much. And now let's compare the graphics performance. We have seven cores on this M1 compared to five cores, but we've had many generations of improvements and the scores are so close together with the Neo being slightly behind. Now the Neo has uh newer accelerators. It has ray tracing as well. So let's close this. Here is 3D Mark loading up. I'll run Steel Nomad Light in the unlimited mode. And here once again we are very close. We have 13.3 FPS on the Neo, 13.6 on the M1. Now I don't think this one uses ray tracing. So let's go ahead and run solar bay here which does use it. And this is what we have been waiting for, guys. We have 8.1 FPS on the Neo compared to 2.5 on the M1 Air. That is over three times better performance when you include some ray tracing. Now those accelerators can also be used for other tasks not just gaming. Now Blender can also use those ray tracing accelerators. So let's go ahead and start this party tug render right here. Now I don't know how many people are going to do 3D rendering on their Neo, but let's see how it does. And look at this guys. The Neo got done in 2 minutes and 47 seconds compared to 6 minutes and 13 seconds with the M1 Air. So, more than twice as fast. It also means more than twice as much FPS if you're trying to play stuff back. So, maybe you can do 3D rendering on this machine. Now, if you want to see how the Neo compares to the new M5 Air, make sure you guys subscribe. Now, I think more people are going to try learning to code with a Neo. So, let's compare the latest version of Xcode. Disappointing. This took a long time to finish up. And the Neo took 399 seconds compared to 322 on the M1 Air. That's a difference of about 24%. And in the other cases where the Neo lost, it was just by a tiny bit. This is a big difference. And we don't know if this is because of the SSD and needing to swap or just because we have two performance cores. Uh but if you are coding that is pretty significant. Now what about logic? Well, we've been testing it. This is the new logic benchmark. You guys can look it up. And the results are very surprising. Maybe surprising. Uh well, with the Neo, I'll keep it running here. Make it quieter. Uh we ended up getting 37 tracks that it was able to run without overloading. Now on the M1 MacBook Air, we got 77 tracks. Yes, that is a pretty big difference. About double. And that might be because it has double the performance cores. And maybe that's what it needs. I mean, it's very intensive to run this. And that difference was bigger than we expected. Now, what about photo editing? So, we have Lightroom opened up right here with 50 highresolution raw images with a bunch of effects. and going through. Surprisingly, the Neo is quicker even though the SSD is about half of the performance. So, that is really cool. Let's zoom into the center there. Not bad. Let's try this one. Okay. Well, the one on the right is zooming too high. It's a mixed bag. Sometimes it's the Neo, sometimes it's the M1 Air. Very responsive on both. And now, let's export all 50 of these on both machines and see how they render images. And while that's running, I opened up Activity Monitor here. And it looks like both are using swap. Both are 8 gigs RAM models. We have 3.2 gigs here, 4.2 on the Neo. And keep in mind, we don't have anything else opened up in the background. It looks like the Neo might win here. All right, it did win. Wow. We have 2 minutes 38 seconds for the Neo and 3 minutes and 1 second for the M1 Air. So, if you work with photos, you have one of these, maybe you want to upgrade or you're just trying to see how it performs, it will handle photos really well. And now, let's do a real world responsiveness and multitasking test. So, as you guys see here, I have five tabs open. We have a YouTube video playing in the background. I have um a couple other websites right here. And we do have these open, but we're also going to be doing some photo editing. So, let's go right back into Lightroom right here. And I'm going to repeat that export just like a lot of people. You don't want to just be sitting around. You want to go to your web browser while you're doing this. So, let's hit export. I'm going to start the timer again, and we'll see what differences we get. Let's bust open the activity monitor. Now, we have almost 4 gigs of swap on the M1 Air, 5.32 on the Neo. It's interesting. It consistently uses more swap with slower SSDs. Our files are working in the background here. So, let's just go ahead and open up Safari both at the same time. We'll see what difference we get. All right. So, the Neo was actually quicker right there. That's interesting. Let's move over to our YouTube video. Wow. >> Whoa. >> Did you expect that, Viv? >> Dude, that was fast. >> You guys saw that yourselves. All right, let's go over to this web page right here. Okay, still faster. I'm clicking at the same time. Apple was the same. Let's go to Tesla. Okay, so that right there looked like to be the same. So maybe it's already it already knows that I want to open up web browsing tabs. Now let's go right back into Lightroom. We want to check on our export. Okay, I thought I didn't click it for a second cuz it wasn't opening up. I don't know what Apple did. >> Maybe that's why there's more swap being used. I have no idea, but I was expecting the opposite results with those SSD tests you guys saw before. Looks like we're about halfway done. I'm going to go right back into here. Let's do a little bit more just so we're doing multiple things at the same time while we are waiting for that export to see how much it affects the speed of the export there. So, as far as scrolling, feels pretty similar there. Let's try out this one. Maybe more lagging on the M1 when I was scrolling down. You guys let me know. And let's just give it a couple minutes to finish. All right, guys. I have the score. The Neo this time took 3 minutes 15 seconds compared to 3 minutes and 50 on the M1 Air. So, the Neo took an additional 37 seconds, I believe, compared to an additional 49 seconds on the M1 Air. To me, this just logically does not make sense. But you guys saw it here. The Neo actually performs better than we expected. And now, let's get into some 4K video editing. This is footage that a lot of people will end up editing. We have some effects on here as well, and we already tested out the Neo in the previous video, and both of these laptops could do a great job with this footage. Now, you can see I have my GPU history opened up right here, and both set to the same. Looks like the M1 is actually using a little bit less of the GPU to process this. That means you might be able to get a little bit more effects or color grading on, but it is pretty close. Now, let's go ahead and export this five minute project. All right, guys. That took 2 minutes 30 seconds on the M1 and 3 minutes and 8 seconds on the Neo. After looking into it, this is just the difference in encoders. Even though the M1 is old, it was particularly built for a laptop. Whereas the Neo was from a phone, and that means it just can't export as quick. And that's also why it uh has only a 4K output because they just didn't need more than that from a phone. So, as far as editing, yes, it will do good, especially for iPhone footage and basic footage, but you will have to wait a little bit longer for the export. And for our last test, we have Cinebench right here. And I think this is going to get interesting. Let's launch our multicore test. And this is going to push the CPUs to their limits. Now, we also have MX Power Gadget opened up right here. And look at that difference. Even just loading this up, we're hitting 15 watts on the M1. Less than five right now. Probably just over five at peak for the Neo with the iPhone chip. That's crazy. Now that it's been about a minute, things have settled down. We're looking at around four watts for the package compared to about 10. It just shows you how efficient this is. And another weird thing is this is the first time we see where EC cores were running faster than PC cores. Now it just flip-flopped a little bit. Okay, there you go. It's back. That is just very unique. The Neo also heats up super quick. If you look here compared to over here, it throttles down very quickly. So, let's just let this run. Looking at the Neo, there's the hot spot right there. And I saw 38 right there. 38.6 looks like the hottest. Moving over to the M1. Wow, much brighter hot spot there. 43. Let's scoot across here. Yeah, I saw 43 right there. In general, the M1 is definitely just looks hotter overall. But if you look right over here at the core max temp where we have 105 degrees Celsius compared to 98 96. So it looks like the heat in the A18 Pro, it's just being stuck in that chip instead of spreading out like you have with the M1 Air. We have our results here. The M1 Air got,530 compared to 1338 for the Neo. So, yes, the Neo is slower, but not a massive difference considering only two performance cores here. And of course, it used way less power doing this compared to the MacBook Air. So, what did all this testing show us? Well, we think the biggest thing is that if somebody buys a new MacBook Neo, even if they're a regular person that mostly uses web browsing, if you do want to get into some of the things we tested, it can do so. Even the things where was a little bit slower, you could still do it and at an amazing price point and it some things it actually did a better job like shocking us in the multitasking test where is more responsive. That was incredible. And this machine, to answer the original question, is going to replace the legendary M1. And it's going to be a whole legend on its own because so many people that would have never considered to buy a MacBook because of how expensive they are will now be buying this machine that will last them a long time and do a great job. So, let us know in the comments what surprised you the most. And are you interested in getting one of these? Make sure you guys click that subscribe button above so you don't want to miss out on these upcoming videos that we have. Check out those right over there.

Can Apple's new MacBook Neo take on the Legendary M1 MacBook Air? You have NO idea.. Buy the MacBook Neo on Amazon ➡ https://geni.us/qlyh Buy a Renewed M1 MacBook Air on Amazon ➡ https://geni.us/RLzEKv App we use for Temp & Fan Speed Monitoring ➡ https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/index.php?fpr=maxtech Timestamps ⬇️ MacBook Neo vs M1 MacBook Air - 00:00 Ports, Keyboard & Trackpad - 0:40 Speaker Comparison - 1:35 Insane Price Difference - 2:39 Lacklust Ports - 3:10 SSD Speed Test - 3:43 Battery & Charging - 4:34 Webcam & Mic Comparison - 4:57 Display Quality - 5:23 Geekbench 6 CPU Test - 6:18 Web Browsing Benchmark - 7:06 Figma Web Design - 7:37 Geekbench 6 Graphics Test - 8:18 3DMark Steel Nomad Light - 8:43 3DMark Solar Bay - 9:04 Blender 3D Rendering - 9:29 Xcode Programming - 10:11 Logic Pro Music Production - 10:47 Lightroom Classic Photo Editing - 11:30 8GB RAM Multitasking Stress Test - 12:43 4K Video Editing - 15:26 Cinebench 2026 CPU Test - 16:37 Thermal Throttling Infrared Camera - 17:40 Is MacBook Neo the new KING?! - 18:39 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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. -~-~~-~~~-~~-~-