The MacBook Neo is Apple’s cheapest MacBook model ever – will it be any good for music production?Apple has overhauled its current lineup of MacBook models, recently introducing the 2026 MacBook Pro and Air equipped with the brand’s latest and most high-performing M5, M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.
But perhaps most intriguing of the Cupertino tech giant’s latest round of launches is the £599 MacBook Neo, the brand’s most affordable MacBook ever, powered by an A18 chip, the same used in the iPhone 16.

READ MORE: How Apple’s new M5 Pro and M5 Max-equipped MacBook Pro could supercharge your music projects

Designing the perfect music production rig is a costly endeavour, helped in no part by the inevitable expense of the machine at the heart of the thing. Tech brands are very good at enticing you into considering the latest and highest-spec gear, but if you’re a hobbyist producer – or even a professional not working with heavily CPU-intensive projects – springing for top of the line is probably a little overkill and will leave you with an unnecessarily large hole in your wallet.
But is a laptop powered by an iPhone chip going too far the other way? Let’s take a look at the MacBook Neo’s specs, and the system requirements for music producers at different levels.
Credit: Apple
The performance of your computer is dictated largely by the processing power of the chip at the heart of the circuitry, but also by RAM – effectively the machine’s headroom or short-term, high-speed memory for performing tasks.
Generally, most music producers are recommended to get a computer with 8GB RAM minimum, with many recommending 16GB for more complex projects running a large number of tracks or plugins concurrently.
The MacBook Neo comes standard with 8GB RAM, so it certainly meets that minimum requirement, but again, it may struggle with more complex projects. It’s also worth noting that the base Neo has only 256GB of storage which, with the ever-increasing data size of software libraries and plugins – plus the masses of files you’ll invariably accrue during your creative endeavours – you’ll most likely need to spring for an external hard drive before long. There is a 512GB MacBook Neo available, too, for £100 extra. In terms of connectivity, the MacBook Neo features a 3.5mm headphone jack plus two USB-C ports.
The MacBook Neo is currently accompanied by all the shiny marketing Apple is so very good at, making it a pretty tempting prospect. But could you be better off as a music producer in this budget range going for a second-hand MacBook Pro – with an M1 or M2 chip, let’s say – that’s a couple years old? Honestly, probably.

Personally, I’ve got an M2-equipped MacBook Pro which comfortably handles my Logic Pro projects, even those that become a bit unwieldy with loads of plugins (including several instances of the same plugin on multiple channels when I should have one instance on a single send, but let’s not get into that).
The point is that music production is not as CPU-intensive a discipline as, let’s say, video editing or animation, so shelling out for the new M5 MacBook Pro is probably a bit unnecessary for the average producer (assuming music production is the main thing you’re buying it for). But might you run into issues running the Neo with its A18 iPhone chip? Perhaps. Simple programmes like GarageBand you’ll probably be flying. But complex Logic or Ableton projects, or Pro Tools? That remains to be seen.
As I publish this it’s 9 March, two days before the MacBook Neo – and new MacBook Pro models – hit the market. So we can’t say for sure yet whether the Neo will be any good for music production. But we’re certainly excited to find out.
Check out the MacBook Neo at Apple.
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