Watch VideoMacBook Neo: How much it will cost in SA and why you should buy it right now

The MacBook Neo was launched on Wednesday, Apple’s budget-friendly laptop priced at approximately R14,599 in South Africa, offering premium build quality, a Liquid Retina display, and powerful A18 Pro processor, making it the best value in its class. Picture: Apple The long-awaited budget laptop offering fromApplefinally dropped on Wednesday, called theMacBook Neo. It is officially the cheapest laptop the tech giant has sold.

That price? It’s $599 in the US,though the straight conversion is around R9,800. With import costs to South Africa, it will cost approximately R14,599.

While the price hasn’t been officially confirmed locally, I came up with this figure because theiPhone 17e, launched on Monday, retails for $599 in the US and is already selling on the iStore website for R14,599. This may seem like a hefty price, but the performance and build quality at this price point beat out every non-Mac competitor in the market. That’s because it comes in a premium aluminium build, while every other laptop at this price will be some form of plastic.

[paywall]

Then there’s the Liquid Retina 13” display and side-firing speakers, magic keyboard, and trackpad. There’s also the more than handy 16-hour battery life. And don’t forget there are four funky colours too, if that’s important to you.

Apple makes the best trackpads on the market, and for this price of the Neo, that’s a win on its own. The Neo has some modest specs of 8GB unified memory and 256GB (upgradeable to 512GB) storage, but thanks to the A18 Pro processor, it can outperform any Intel or AMD equivalent at this price point. That’s despite the fact that it’s actually a phone processor, which was used in the iPhone 16 Pro and Max devices.

It means anyone who uses a laptop for web browsing, office tasks, meetings, and even light video and photo editing will have more than enough power. That’s because the A18 processor is more powerful than the M1 MacBook Air, which I personally used right up until the end of 2023 for all the above office work and some heavier video editing. I still use the M1 Pro, which is only slightly more powerful than the A18 Pro. I’m hoping the local iStore might knock off a little bit of the starting price, which is close to R15k, but even if they don’t, this is still the best laptop you can get for that price.

[/paywall]