I got a MacBook Neo!
I have been a Windows user pretty much my whole life, with the usage of Mac for only about a year when I obtained a Late 2009 21 inch iMac.
During the time I used Mac, I actually enjoyed it! It is a pretty nice OS and very simple in my opinion. Obviously it wasn't the best hardware and had no metal GPU so using OCLP on it was fine but some apps like iMovie and GarageBand (any app that requires metal) doesn't work.
I wanted to upgrade that computer so naturally I had an SSD laying around (Had upgraded RAM prior because it was easier) and tried to upgrade it, long story short I accidentally broke the screen connector off the board and that was that.
My experience with Windows wasn't that bad despite running on crappy hardware (i7-2600 18GB DDR3, i5-2400M 4GB RAM) you get the point and I didn't mind that much. Overtime I naturally started needing more power of my computer and it was then the HDD I had been using for storage in my PC (where downloads and most things where) started to fail and
because of that the computer randomly started to freeze, so I Upgraded/Downgraded if you will to a Dell Latitude 5320 2 in 1. It was at the time a pretty solid option, ok battery life for what I needed, 16GB of RAM and an SSD wayy faster than my old one, with a CPU in similar performance. For the price it was a good deal, so I bought it.
I loved that machine as it was what I had wanted, I didn't want an upgrade, I wanted a computer that functioned and I can take with me if need be. After a few months of using it I had noticed that the battery was at 48% Battery Health which was interesting as I got it in A Grade refurbished (makes sense, but still) so since it still had warrenty I went to the shop I bought it from and they gave me a new battery for free!
The battery was way better after the fact and I was able to get about 6-8 hours of SOT compared to 3-4 before, and I didn't need to have 10 hours or anything because I was almost always near a outlet (although would prefer not to have to as it was a school machine aswell so didn't want teachers screaming at me because it was already dead)
It was only a few months after however, that the "New" battery dropped 14% in capacity over the span of a week, so I went back to them and was like "Can I get another replacement for this as this is not what it should be?" And they did infact give me another one, but this time I did the repair in the store just in case (it was good that I did) because the laptop didn't turn on straight away, so I took it back to my house and let it charge for an hour and it did actually turn on, at 2%....
I'm not sure if you know this or not, but batteries are kept in storage ideally between 40-80% so they can preserve their health over long storage periods, and it appears that it hadn't been, unfortunately it showed too as it was reporting the wrong health of 54wh instead of 63wh and it wouldn't charge past 12% despite the old one charging fine (tested after the fact)
So I decided enough was enough and bought a new MacBook Neo, now despite the sales guy not recommending it because "it wasn't capable enough for my needs, the 8GB of ram is too limiting" I bought it. And I have to say the sales guy was wrong lol.
This thing is amazing, Not only do I get like 12 hours of battery life (39% after 11hrs today), It totally handles everything I need, such as coding, some schoolwork, gaming in semi High settings (GTA V runs pretty well at 1080P mixed High!), and even some virtual machines with VMWare Fusion!
I also love the keyboard and touchpad, and don't even get me started on the display! The display on this thing is I think 2K and Retina so looks absolutely gorgeous and also has no notch which is nice (doesn't really matter but nice) It's also pretty damn bright considering the fact that to get those 6-8hrs of battery life I had mentioned on the Latitude, I had to have the thing at like 20% brightness and couldn't see anything outside in the Sun! Whereas the Neo I keep around 50-60% Brightness and I swear it's like double the brightness of the Latitude, and goes higher lol
People do tend to say that "Oh 8GB of ram isn't enough for anything on a computer", and I think to be honest, they are quite mistaken, yes on a Windows machine that is absolutely true! But on macOS and Linux machines, that absolutely isn't the case! macOS whilst uses similar to Windows 11 idle, it handles Swap wayyy better out of the box. And over the few days I've had the Neo so far, I don't think I've actually that much things enter the yellow zone in Activity Monitor and actually using Swap other than when I was playing GTA V on the thing.
Anyway, wayyy to much yapping (I've been writing this for an hour now!) But in my opinion, I think that the MacBook Neo is a great option for users who either want a Mac but don't want to spend thousands acquiring one, or perhaps want a better option for their money compared to the Windows laptops, and Tablets in that range with better performance.
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