Apple MacBook Neo Wins TechRadar’s 2026 Laptop of the Year

The MacBook Neo earns TechRadar’s Laptop of the Year award for changing the conversation around affordable laptops. Its appeal isn’t that it beats more powerful machines at every task. It’s that Apple brought much of the MacBook experience to a lower starting price, giving everyday buyers a new option and prompting PC makers to sharpen their own offers.

I reviewed the MacBook Neo in March, and it stood out as an award contender from the start. The award recognizes that influence as much as the laptop itself: competitors such as Dell and Acer have since introduced similarly priced Windows laptops that their makers positioned as alternatives to Apple’s machine.

A lower price changed the contest

Apple’s reputation has long rested on premium devices. Buyers have often paid more for a MacBook in exchange for strong build quality and a laptop they expect to keep for years. The Neo brought that proposition within reach of more people. Its starting price was $599 / £599 / AU$1,049, a figure that came in far below what many had anticipated before Apple revealed the laptop.

That price mattered because laptops are a substantial purchase, especially for people trying to manage everyday costs. At the same time, pressure on memory prices was contributing to higher costs across the tech market. A comparatively affordable new MacBook was a welcome change from the expectation that new hardware would keep getting more expensive.

The Neo doesn’t make every other laptop obsolete. This year has brought out more powerful systems, and buyers who want to play PC games should look elsewhere. The Neo’s case is narrower and more useful: it offers an appealing route into Apple’s laptop lineup for people who mainly need a dependable machine for day-to-day work and other routine tasks.

That focus helps explain why the laptop has mattered beyond its own sales pitch. Before the Neo, a buyer considering a lower-cost laptop could easily find themselves choosing between a basic Windows model and paying considerably more to enter the Mac ecosystem. Apple’s new price point forced competitors to make their own affordable options more compelling.

Competitors had to answer

Dell and Acer responded with laptops aimed at the same stretch of the market. The Dell XPS 13 (2026) and the Acer Swift Air 14 helped make Windows 11 laptops at lower prices worth considering again. That’s a meaningful result for buyers: when a prominent laptop arrives at a new price point, competing models have to make a clearer case for what they offer.

The new Googlebook laptops face a different challenge. Their higher prices are harder to justify when the Neo and the Windows machines it helped spur offer strong value. That doesn’t settle which platform is right for a particular buyer; it does make price and practical benefits more central to the comparison.

A price increase softened the advantage

The Neo’s early momentum came with a catch. A few months after launch, Apple raised its price by $100 / £100. That change took some shine off the original value proposition and made it less of an automatic recommendation for anyone asking which laptop to buy. Meanwhile, several competing laptops appeared to keep their initial prices, leaving Apple with less room to claim the cheapest option.

In that sense, the laptop’s success helped create a tougher comparison for itself. Apple showed rivals that buyers might respond to a more affordable laptop, and some of those rivals held on to their pricing while Apple moved its own upward. The result is a closer contest than the Neo’s launch price suggested.

Still, the increase doesn’t erase what the laptop does well. It remains a well-built choice for everyday use and the least expensive way to get into the Mac ecosystem. Buyers should weigh its current price against the Windows alternatives available to them, along with whether they need the extra power or gaming capability those other machines may provide.

Why it takes the award

The MacBook Neo isn’t TechRadar’s Laptop of the Year because it’s the right pick for every buyer. It takes the award because it made an important part of Apple’s laptop experience available at a price that reshaped expectations, then pushed other makers to respond. That kind of effect can benefit people shopping across the market, even if they choose a Windows laptop instead.

For buyers who want a sturdy laptop for ordinary tasks and have been curious about macOS, the Neo remains an appealing starting point. Its higher price makes comparison shopping more important than it was at launch, but the wider market now offers more affordable choices in part because Apple made that segment harder to ignore. In 2026, that’s a compelling reason to give the Neo the title.