While the impact of the MacBook Neo is huge, this type of review is really screaming of an inexperienced reviewer who can't actually make good purchase recommendations to average people.
It's really cool that this device is cheap but 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.
The moment they upgrade it to the next iPhone processor, it'll get 12GB of RAM, and it will need it.
And the other elephant in the room that John doesn't bring up is the fact that you can definitely find in-warranty MacBook Air options for ~$700 and they'll be much better buys.
You'll get more RAM, keep your Touch ID, better trackpad, better screen, better battery life, better speakers, better mics, I think even a better webcam? Maybe.
That reminds me: the small battery in the Neo means that high screen brightness or more than light usage will more quickly deplete it compared to other Mac systems.
Here is a video of a user who opens up every single program on the Mac, including a video editor and edits 4k video at full resolution with no sluggishness. Care to reevaluate your opinion?
Looks pretty sluggish at 5:00, not that I'd even expect this class of system to handle that kind of video project all that well regardless of RAM pressure.
6:49 to 7:00 is how long Photoshop takes to go from the preview to the viewing the original resolution image zoomed in. Quite sluggish.
Dumping a bunch of out-of-focus idle apps into swap not only isn't the best test, but also isn't a magical solution that has no downsides even if it stays responsive a lot of the time.
There are all kinds of ways relying on swap can quickly turn your system into having a storage/memory bottleneck rather than a CPU bottleneck and they have very little to do with having a ton of backgrounded idle apps open.
He even mentioned one of them, which was screen recording, since that's adding write cycles to the disk while your system is also competing for disk writes for swap memory.
For example, let's say I'm downloading/extracting a large file (e.g., a game on Steam) while I have a lot of Chrome tabs and programs open with a good amount of RAM pressure. Now I might see more sluggishness than if I had a larger amount of RAM and the exact same system specs since my swap is competing with file write activity.
This isn't some kind of exotic uncommon activity.
A YouTuber doing a quick "open a bunch of apps and play around with them" doesn't necessarily test the kind of specific actions that would deal the most damage to a RAM-starved system.
> Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.
I'm sorry but this line invalidates most of your comment, to the point of looking like satire.
We have reviews and videos of people editing 4k videos with glee, launching and switching between all apps at once, and stuff like that.
I used the base M1 as a power user/developer for years when it came out, and the only reason I had to switch was the storage. Sluggishness wasn't on the top 10 issues I had with that device.
Be careful of the MacBook Neo reviews that have hit so early. Many of these reviewers are happy to sing praises of Apple for views, clicks, and early access to review units, etc. It is not a device that anyone has had on their desk able to test extensively, write review scripts, record and edit video, etc, yet without having special access.
Dave2D had his MacBook Neo on his desk with an edited video completed on the day the computer was announced. That's the special access I'm talking about. And you'll be lucky if you watched an early video like that from someone like him who is willing to be reasonably critical and risk losing that special level of access.
This segment of the Just Josh Tech podcast talks a lot about the caution you need to take with Apple reviewers who are just rushing review content out there: https://youtu.be/kSwXyxAA9XY?t=2406
I think it's very interesting how they note that someone they know who is very non-technical noticed the sluggishness of web browsing with an 8GB M1 MacBook Air. I noticed that when I owned mine as well. I bought into the hype surrounding the faster RAM and was happy to save some money at the time. I wouldn't say I regret it but I would say it made the system last much less time.
Yes, you can edit 4K videos, but not all 4K video editing workflows are created equally. You can't just jump into Final Cut Pro with complex timelines and lots of plugins and expect a good time. But of course if you're editing 4K videos in CapCut, that's no problem.
For more casual users, this same concept applies: a Safari user who has 3 tabs open is having a much different experience than a Chrome user with 40 tabs open and a simultaneous big file download competing for swap disk writes, even though both of those users are "casual" and "non-technical" computer users.
And here's the other thing, which Dave2D also mentioned: If you're locked in at the level where you just cannot spend more than $499 on a laptop, the Neo is a good deal. But if you actually have some willingness to spend just a little bit more, you'll almost certainly find some kind of M2/M3 MacBook Air, often brand new discounted at a retailer like Walmart or Best Buy where you end up 16GB of RAM and a ton of additional niceties over the Neo (Haptic trackpad, backlit keyboard, larger battery, better screen, speakers, microphones, etc). That system is a system that will ultimately last you longer than a Neo and only a small additional cost gets you there.
It's really cool that this device is cheap but 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. Even non-technical web browsing users will notice the sluggishness coming from that spec.
The moment they upgrade it to the next iPhone processor, it'll get 12GB of RAM, and it will need it.
And the other elephant in the room that John doesn't bring up is the fact that you can definitely find in-warranty MacBook Air options for ~$700 and they'll be much better buys.
You'll get more RAM, keep your Touch ID, better trackpad, better screen, better battery life, better speakers, better mics, I think even a better webcam? Maybe.
That reminds me: the small battery in the Neo means that high screen brightness or more than light usage will more quickly deplete it compared to other Mac systems.