The $599 MacBook Neo Shook Up the Laptop Market — Now Dell and Microsoft Are Playing Catch-Up

The MacBook Neo was like throwing a giant boulder into a still, peaceful pond—and the industry is still feeling the ripple effects. Thanks to its dramatic $599 price, it pushed Apple into a brand-new laptop demographic. The response from the Windows side has been soft—until now. Cheaper laptops with only 8 GB of RAM are coming—most notably, the new Dell XPS 13 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 8. Following suit with the MacBook Neo, Dell is making its brand more accessible than ever, using many of the same tricks as Apple. Microsoft? Not so much.

Going Backward

The MacBook Neo was rightly criticized for having only 8 GB of RAM in the base model, as it limits what this otherwise great laptop could do. Then again, this is a $599 laptop. It’s not meant for demanding workloads, and even though 16 GB should be the new established baseline, there is a reluctance to see laptops get more expensive than they already are. The memory shortage that has swept through the entire industry’s supply chain is taking effect—and not even Apple has been able to move forward without making some necessary changes. Either way, there should be room in the market for a device for people who don’t have heavy computing needs but want something that looks and feels premium. That describes the MacBook Neo exactly.

The new Dell XPS 13 takes a nearly identical approach. It is made entirely of aluminum; it is half an inch thick and every bit as premium-looking as XPS laptops have always been. It even uses a high-end IPS screen with a higher resolution of 2560 x 1600 and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. Dell even says it goes up to 500 nits of brightness. This is deliberate. It matches the MacBook Neo's sharpness and max brightness exactly, and has a faster refresh rate to boot. Yet it is only $699 (or $599 for students). The XPS 13 makes similar trade-offs as the MacBook Neo. First, it starts with only 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It also starts with a slower Intel Core 5 processor (note: not Intel Core Ultra). It will be interesting to find how the performance and battery life stack up against the MacBook Neo, but Dell is clearly taking notes from Apple, which used a slower iPhone chip in the Neo instead of an M-series laptop-grade processor. What is nice about the Dell XPS 13, though, is that you can scale it up appropriately. The MacBook Neo is capped in both storage and memory, but the XPS 13 can be configured up to 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

A number of $500 to $600 laptops from companies like Acer, Lenovo, and HP have been tested recently, many of which take a more conventional Windows approach to rivaling the MacBook Neo by offering better specs at lower prices. They all have 16 GB of RAM and use more powerful chips, too. But none challenge the MacBook Neo in display quality and chassis materials. That does not mean there is no place for something like the HP OmniBook 3, but it does not play for the same audience as the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Neo.

The Wrong Direction

Inevitably, there would be a company that thinks it can ride on the success of the MacBook Neo without understanding what makes it tick. Last week, Microsoft announced two versions of its Surface Laptop for Business PCs: a higher-end 13.8-inch model and a cheaper 13-inch device. The 13.8-inch model is a more standard refresh, implementing Intel’s new Core Ultra X7 368H Panther Lake chip—and most notably, it still starts with 16 GB of RAM. The smaller 13-inch model is where things get problematic. Despite its starting price of $1,200, that configuration only comes with 8 GB of RAM. Do not get too caught up in the price, since business PCs always come with an upcharge. The starting RAM is the eyebrow-raising spec. Unlike the new Dell XPS 13, Microsoft is not tricking this out with a thinner chassis and an upgraded screen—it is just giving you less computing power and calling it good. And to be fair, this “optional” 8 GB model may not be the primary driver of sales, but it signals a misunderstanding of what made the MacBook Neo successful.

Market Context

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