Apple MacBook Neo 13" A18 Pro, 8GB/256GB — Silver

The MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable laptop, and it gets there by using the A18 Pro — the chip family from iPhone rather than the M series. That is a more capable starting point than it sounds: six CPU cores, a 5-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and the same 16-core Neural Engine architecture that drives on-device Apple Intelligence features.

The display is a 13-inch LED-backlit IPS panel at 2408 × 1506 — 219 pixels per inch, so text is properly sharp — reaching 500 nits and covering a billion colours. At 1.23 kg and 1.27 cm thick it is the lightest Mac laptop, which is the point of it: this is a machine for writing, browsing, email, classwork and streaming, carried every day.

This configuration has 8 GB of unified memory and a 256 GB SSD, both fixed at manufacture. Two USB-C ports (one USB 3, one USB 2) and a headphone jack, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6, a 1080p camera, and a 36.5 Wh battery rated up to 16 hours of video streaming. Finished in silver.