The MacBook Neo has caused a stir in the PC space, with the $600 Apple laptop bodying all opposition from Windows and ChromeOS machines. Reaching this price required significant compromises, including a phone processor and just 8GB of unified memory, yet a budding community has sprung up to work out the most important question of all: can you game on this thing?

That's exactly what we're working out, in true Digital Foundry fashion, but we're also looking at performance in the type of content creation scenarios that Macs have typically excelled.

Before we get into our benchmark results, it's worth acquainting ourselves with the machine itself - specifically where Apple has cut back compared to the now mid-range MacBook Air. The 13-inch Neo lacks a backlit keyboard, for example, which has come standard on MacBooks since the 2010 Air, while the trackpad uses a cheaper mechanical click design without Force Touch haptics that is a clear downgrade. Connectivity is limited too, with Thunderbolt support entirely absent and only one of the two USB-C ports support USB 3.0 10Gbps speeds - the second is limited to USB 2.0 and therefore is best used for charging.

Despite these modifications, the Neo maintains a premium feel versus its similarly priced Windows competition. It has a Retina-class display with excellent colour reproduction, limited to a 60Hz refresh rate but superior to the typical 1080p panels found in this segment. The build quality is excellent as well, as it retains Apple's signature unibody aluminium chassis with a beautiful anodised finish in one of multiple colours. Overall, it's a handsome and well-finished device.

The most impactful concessions are therefore internal. Instead of the M-series chips that have made even the very first Apple Silicon MacBook a strong performer even in 2026, Apple uses the A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 Pro. The chips used are actually production rejects, with one disabled GPU core, and they offer a much smaller CPU/GPU configuration than standard M-series hardware. This is backed by a meagre 8GB of unified package-on-package memory, which limits the machine versus the 16GB of memory standard on new Macs from 2024.

Initial gaming tests on low-spec friendly titles like Death Stranding and Control found performance generally sitting in a wobbly 45-60fps range at 1080p with MetalFX upscaling. A better experience in Death Stranding is possible by locking the frame rate to 30fps and increasing the input resolution, proving this configuration very achievable for the phone processor. In Control, enabling RT, even on medium settings, dragged performance down to a barely playable 20-30fps range.

More demanding titles faced steeper challenges. Grid Legends at 720p showed variable performance, occasionally dropping into the 40s. Resident Evil 4 also ran between 40-60fps at 720p, but suffered from poor visual quality due to the FSR 1-like spatial MetalFX implementation. Critically, Cyberpunk 2077 proved unplayable even on the lowest settings with aggressive upscaling, suffering from frame-time spikes that made the experience difficult to enjoy.

For gaming purposes then, the MacBook Neo is functionally equivalent to an iPhone 16 Pro. It falls short of higher-end M-series iPads and MacBooks in graphics rendering, with the M5 iPad Pro offering roughly triple the performance (!). Current-gen titles like Assassin's Creed Shadows are largely unplayable as they run out of memory even before reaching the main menu. However, the Neo excels at simpler, mobile-friendly iPad applications. Crucially, the Neo sustains performance exceptionally well too, retaining about 90 percent of its peak performance due to its greater thermal mass, outperforming both iPhones and M-series iPads in stress tests.

In professional and everyday contexts, the Neo is a decent machine. Light tasks such as web browsing and word processing work smoothly, and while multitasking is possible, pushing it results in the system using substantial swap storage. Final Cut Pro export times are acceptable for casual and short-form video, but heavy workloads like Handbrake encoding reveal the limitations of the fanless, core-starved chip. An M4 Mac Mini, for instance, completes a 4K60 H264 video encode in about a third of the Neo's time.

Despite its lack of performance prowess, the MacBook Neo is an excellent all-round computer. It provides a responsive user experience with brilliant build quality and is highly recommended for price-conscious, less demanding users. As a gaming machine, the Neo can put up a fight against last-gen and cross-gen titles, but it strains against current-gen fare with greater requirements. It's clear that the MacBook Neo is ultimately a workable gaming machine that outstrips what its specs suggest, and it's fascinating to see the breadth of results that the Mac gaming community has been able to squeeze out of it.