00:06All right, so technically, this is a brand new product line from Apple. This is the brand new
00:11MacBook Neo, the ultra budget $599 laptop, which is absolutely nuts. I was actually just at the
00:17launch in New York for this. It comes in four different colorways. So the one which I think
00:21pops the most, my, I'd say like favorite of the bunch, just because it's so different. So this
00:25is in citrus. It also comes in indigo blush and silver. Let me know which one your favorite one
00:30is, but at your very first like look in unboxing. So obviously you see the MacBook up top. You can
00:35see the main colorway that you choose, obviously like citrus and a MacBook Neo on the side, even
00:41though it's budget, they still didn't skimp out on a, like the box. It's still like the same that
00:45you've known from every Apple product. And the first thing that I actually noticed there's this
00:49little like hello on the pull tab, which is kind of cool. Obviously that is color matched and
00:54underneath, um, this is the first time you're on the channel designed by California in Apple.
01:00And we have essentially a iPhone charger inside. So this is only a 20 watt brick and just a standard
01:08USB-C cable, non color matched and inside no stickers, obviously MacBook Neo. And that is
01:17that. So off this comes. And if this is the first time you are seeing this color, I will say
01:26it is
01:26closer to like maybe lime. There's definitely a lot of green in this. It's not completely yellow. As an
01:34example, I'll bring up this like yellow book. You can see the big difference. So that is kind of cool.
01:39Obviously startup and everything super simple. And these are the new wallpapers that also kind of match.
01:44And if you look closely enough or squint at it, this actually says Mac in the background,
01:50which is kind of cool. So let's talk about this price quickly. So $599, $799 Canadian. And with the
01:57student discount, a hundred dollars less. So you can technically get this for $499, which I think
02:03this thing will sell so many of a lot of students will eye this. It is a lot cheaper than
02:08say the next
02:09level, which is the MacBook air. It's close to like $500 cheaper, which is crazy. There are
02:14obviously corners that Apple had to cut to get there. Let's get into that first. So the build
02:19quality, this is the first non-unibody MacBook. Like it still feels obviously very premium. This
02:25is all aluminum, but you can actually see at the back, there is a seam that runs across the entire
02:29back plate. So you can actually remove this quite easily. It doesn't feel as like solid as say like a
02:35MacBook air, MacBook pro, but compared to what's on the market for $599, a lot of like PCs would be
02:42bending creaking. And those are typically made of some plastic or some polymer. So that's like the
02:47first thing on the inside. So the track pad, so it's no longer the force touch track pad with
02:52haptics. This is a multi-touch track pad. So it's actually built out of two separate layers. I was
02:58kind of told. So there is a little bit of give here. It doesn't once again, give you that same
03:02premium
03:03feel. Once again, compared to most windows laptops, most other laptops, like in this category that just
03:09feel cheap. They like only work in like the bottom, like one third quadrant. This still works like well
03:14across like all, but once again, just a step down from what you're used to, you still get the same
03:18great typing experience. So this is the same like magic keyboard. When you upgrade to the 512 gig version,
03:24because this is a 256, you do get touch ID, but I have the base model here. So you can
03:28see it's just
03:29the lock button. It is no longer backlit. And this is also the first time we have a color match
03:33keyboard. So you can see here a like slight yellow or a slight citrus base keyboard, but all the keys
03:39are a lot lighter. It's like a tint of off white. And for some reason, even though it's technically
03:44the same, it doesn't feel maybe it's like my mind knowing that the track pad isn't as good, but
03:50yeah, it still feels like once again, good compared to most other things. I've got my MacBook Pro here
03:54and just for whatever reason, maybe because it's a V build, maybe feels like a bit more hollow. Maybe
04:00that's like what's underneath the keys, but similar placebo effect, maybe a bit more flex on this.
04:07But considering this is like what a 10th of the price, like knock off an extra zero, like 5,000
04:13versus 500. They've done a like a really good job here of like how this is. Another thing they've done
04:19to kind of reduce is the ports that you see on the side. So you only have them on the
04:23one side. So
04:24these are only like USB-C ports. If you're not like a real techie, they look similar to what is
04:28like
04:28on my MacBook Pro as an example, but they are not Thunderbolt. So you have a USB 3 port and
04:33a USB
04:332 port. Obviously they still have the headphone jack. It only comes with a 20 watt charger. So
04:37just slower charging speeds. Maybe you'll notice the big difference in like data transfer rates.
04:41If you're putting a lot of stuff onto an SSD, but they do have like a headphone jack, which I
04:45like
04:45and the speakers, which are now located on the side when I played them, honestly, pretty decent
04:51as reference. Here's a quick little speaker sample for this price. That is super, super tough to beat
05:06the display on this. It's really good comparable to the MacBook air. So it's the same liquid retina
05:11display still gets as bright, like up to 500 nits. Uh, it doesn't have like the wide color gamut. So
05:16it's sRGB compared to a P3. It doesn't have true tone. And I guess it does have these, uh, thicker
05:22bezels that run on the sides. And because there is no notch that bezel runs all the way across
05:27the front facing camera, it's just a 1080p camera compared to the center stage camera on most other
05:32Apple devices. But if you look at all those things, are they worth like double the price? I think Apple
05:38did such a good job at keeping this like on budget. This price range will attract like so many new
05:44people, especially with that student discount. Like imagine this for 499 bucks. So I'll talk about
05:49the different spec options so you can get this in the base. So this has eight gigs of Ram that's
05:54standard across all. It has 256 gigs of storage, but the upgraded version for a hundred dollars more
05:59gets you 512 gigs. And of course, uh, the good old touch ID unlock button on the side, stick to
06:05the
06:05base model. Like if you're getting the 512 or 256, you're likely to get an external SSD anyways, the Ram,
06:11which once again, stuck at eight, obviously would have loved to see that at 16 gigs to future proof
06:15itself. But the big thing here, this is no longer running like an M series chip. This is running an
06:20iPhone chip, the A18 pro. And we saw that in the iPhone 16 pro max. So that's now like one
06:27year old
06:27running Mac OS. And I know a lot of you will ask like, can an iPhone chip? So like my
06:3216 pro max here,
06:33can that run like Mac OS? When you look back at the A18 pro that is like comparable to M1
06:39performance,
06:39which so many people raved about those chips are obviously like in an iPad, which people
06:44obviously love. They use now that is running like proper Mac OS. And you know how before when Apple
06:50switched from say like Intel to their own Silicon, you had two different kinds of software. That's not
06:55the case for this. So anything that you see, like on the Apple store, any sort of stuff that you
06:59download that works for like M series or like M one through to what are we at? M five that
07:04works on
07:05this same software, no issues. It's great. And of course the big thing about like A18 and this mobile
07:10chip is the efficiency on this. So let's talk about like battery life. So it is almost like two thirds
07:15the size of what's in the MacBook air. So it's 36.5 watt hours, but you still get like 16
07:21hours of video
07:22playback, 11 ish, like hours of general browsing. That is still good enough to last you the entire day.
07:29Like when you're a student, you're out like on campus, you're using the device, you're using this to
07:33browse, type up stuff, look up like info. You don't need to worry about charging this and the
07:38standby times on Mac OS once again are great. So you just close the laptop when you're done,
07:42you carry it around to your next thing and just open it back up and it's ready to go.
07:46So to actual performance, I'm going to throw up some like benchmark scores are right now,
07:51you can take away what you will if you're like, you're a big like geek bench person. But
07:54for example, for who this laptop is for, like I said, students, budget friendly people that
08:00aren't really pushing their device. You're not going to be editing like multi streams of 4k footage.
08:06I installed like final cut on this for like social media stuff. When you look back once again at the
08:10M1, that was still able to handle like 4k footage, like a bit slower. But if you're editing social
08:16media clips, posting stuff like Instagram, TikTok, stuff that you're taking with like your phone,
08:20it works. It works like great. Regular productivity stuff like emailing, using Excel,
08:25word processing, stuff that most people do like on the day to day for this like price range.
08:30You don't need to spend like $1,500 on a device, which you won't like unlock its full potential
08:35for when you're just watching Netflix, when you're just watching like YouTube videos,
08:38when you're watching like me on the MacBook, like Neo, you do not need 32 gigs, 64 gigs of RAM
08:44or
08:45like the M5 Pro chip, which the MacBook also just got a new update. That video is dropping soon.
08:50Selfless plug for myself. This is great at what it does. Like when you compare this to like Chromebooks,
08:55which are in this price category, get this over like a $500 Chromebook. What this doesn't do is
09:01those like pro or like heavy creative like workflows, like do not stick like 4k, 8k footage.
09:07Do not be MKBHD, run a red camera and expect this thing to handle that. Like high-end gaming,
09:12you can still get by like with Apple Arcade stuff that runs pretty smooth. Most of that is like
09:17mobile based gaming. Like anyways, don't expect to play cyberpunk on this. Or if you just got a wow,
09:22midnight, if you're hopping back in like a, some sorry person like me, you won't be running it on
09:26this. And to kind of wrap it off, I've brought out like my windows device that is around the same
09:30price. This one's just a bit larger. So the 13 inch model of this laptop costs like around that $600
09:36mark just to compare just for a good old sake. So the first thing like around build, like there is
09:42a lot
09:42of flex, like on these windows displays, you can see that amount of wiggle, obviously like on the
09:48MacBook, this is like all aluminum. This is like some sort of like plastic, that same kind of like
09:53build goes throughout. There is like a lot of give, you know, just like one finger pressing,
09:57you can see like on, on the keyboard and like even like the trackpad, I mentioned that like it doesn't
10:02really work in like this top corner, whereas like on the bottom, that's where you get a lot of like
10:07that flex, a little bit of flex, not a lot like on the MacBook. And once again, not the same
10:11trackpad
10:11experience as like on a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, but still feels way better than what's going on here.
10:17The next thing displays just the vibrancy on the MacBook is a lot better, even like viewing angles,
10:21like the cutoff on some of these like Windows ones are like terrible, like you just cannot see
10:26anything like off angle, I guess it's their version of privacy display. You've seen like the Samsung
10:32device, that's what that's all about performance, like you can still get by, you know, browsing,
10:36you can still do word processing, but it's if you want to push it anymore, that's where most Windows
10:41devices fall short, not running like Mac OS, you still get the weird software updates,
10:46it's Windows, it's clunky, the overall device is like heavier, it's like a lot thicker.
10:51I sound like the biggest like Apple fanboy with this video, but I'm just trying to kind of show
10:55the difference in like pricing here or what you're getting for this money. Like it's not perfect if
11:01you're coming from like a MacBook Air, if you're used to that premiumness of like a MacBook Pro,
11:05but for this price range, like I cannot wrap my head around like $499. There's like really nothing
11:11else like on the market that I would recommend in this price range, unless you get like a really
11:15good Black Friday or really heavy like discount or if you pick something up used, it is hard to beat
11:23$500 on this MacBook Neo, even $600. If you don't get the student pricing or like say 800 in good
11:29old
11:29Canadian pesos, it is hard. It's not like what Apple has done with this. I think this will sell really
11:36well.
11:37Let me know your guys' thoughts and if you are picking up your device in citrus. Peace.
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