In this video I’m responding to a comment I keep seeing: “You don’t need a MacBook Neo, you need an M1 MacBook Air for less.” So I actually ran the numbers and the context matters. The MacBook Neo is $599 normally (or $499 with the student price), and meanwhile Walmart has pre-owned M1 MacBook Air listings around $361 — but that’s used, and that changes the whole value equation. Performance-wise, benchmarks people have run show the Neo can be slightly more powerful in some areas than the M1 MacBook Air, except for GPU. But the bigger thing I want you to think about is support and longevity. The M1 Air came out in 2020, and while I personally think there are still a few good years left (my M1 Max MacBook Pro still runs insanely well), I also think Apple is going to start pushing upgrades like on-device AI that older base models may not qualify for in future macOS versions. If I know nothing about you and you’re choosing between the two, the safe bet is the Neo: it’s new, the battery is 100%, and Apple will support it for many years.