New MacBook Neo with A18 Pro chip benchmarks reveal minimal performance drop despite reduced GPU cores, matching iPhone 16 Pro Max scores. Affordable laptop launches March 11.
© Apple
New benchmark results for the upcoming MacBook Neo with the A18 Pro chip have surfaced in the Geekbench 6 database. Despite using a version of the chip with a reduced graphics core, the laptop delivers performance nearly identical to that of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The MacBook Neo employs a "binned" variant of the A18 Pro, featuring a 5-core GPU instead of the 6-core unit found in the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. While this was expected to cause a noticeable drop in graphics power, the difference is minimal. In the Metal test, the smartphone was only 5.6% faster.
According to the published data, the MacBook Neo scored 3,450 points in the single-core test and 8,702 points in the multi-core test. That multi-core result is actually 2.7% higher than the iPhone 16 Pro Max's score in multi-threaded mode. In the graphics test, the laptop posted 31,286 points compared to the smartphone's 33,030. This shows that trimming the GPU core count has had almost no impact on overall performance.
Priced from $599 for the 256GB model, the MacBook Neo is Apple's most affordable laptop. Sales begin on March 11, and these early test results indicate its computational power is on par with the company's flagship smartphones.