Tempted to buy the MacBook Neo? Survey says loads of readers are too

Android fans often criticize Apple for not thinking outside of the box, but the MacBook Neo is a great example of the company doing just that. The budget laptop is effectively powered by the guts of the iPhone 16 Pro, making it both powerful when grunt is required, and efficient when frugality is key. More importantly, it’s perhaps the first real indication that Apple is ready to unify its desktop and mobile computing products, and that is particularly exciting for the future. However, given that the MacBook Neo is an Apple product, we wanted to gauge just how many Android Authority readers would pick it over a Google Chromebook.

We ran a survey, you voted, and now the results are in, and judging by your responses, Apple made a winner.

This poll received over 4,600 votes, but the overwhelming winner appears to be the MacBook Neo. Just under four in every five readers (78.8%) said that they’d “definitely consider” buying Apple’s new budget laptop instead of a Chromebook. That’s quite a turn up for the books, given our readers’ usual anti-Apple stance. Perhaps the only marks against the Neo are its limited RAM — just 8GB available — and its paltry 256GB of internal storage. That’ll certainly run out very quickly if you’re planning to use the machine for any multimedia-related workloads, but then again, this is meant to be an affordable product, not a workstation. However, if Apple were to excel anywhere, it would be the seamlessness and connectedness of its self-made products and its software prowess. It’s clear why many readers are weighing up the Neo as their latest tech purchase.

On the other side of the fence, Chromebooks still have huge support. Around 21% of respondents “prefer Chromebooks” and cannot be convinced to even look at the MacBook Neo. Of course, if you are entrenched in the Android and Google ecosystems, going for an Apple product doesn’t make all that much sense. You’ll want your devices to mesh seamlessly, and that’s likely why many of our readers still lean towards Google’s platform. Google’s suite of online products also makes it a more attractive option for cloud-based computing. I don’t see the Neo usurping Google’s lead in the education space, for example.

Nevertheless, the Neo is certainly a wake-up call for Google and its mobile computing ambitions, as well as for other players like Qualcomm and Microsoft. While Apple is busy putting phone hardware into computers, Google is trying to get consumers to use their phones as computers. We’ll have to wait and see which of these two strategies pays off in the long run.