Best Buy MacBook Neo, Air And Pro Preorders Get Up To A $100 Gift Card

Apple is coming off one of its busiest weeks in a long time, in terms of product announcements. Instead of announcing a bunch of products on a single day, Apple took a staggered approach to unveiling a barrage of hardware, some of which includes its cheapest MacBook ever, the MacBook Neo, along with an M5 MacBook Air and a refreshed MacBook Pro lineup powered by its also-new M5 Pro and M5 Max silicon. All three are available to preorder with a special bonus offer.

Arguably Apple's most interesting announcement is that of the MacBook Neo, which is available to preorder starting at $599 at Best Buy, with a $25 gift card to sweeten the pot. This is the most affordable MacBook to date, and it's taking aim at competing with entry-level Windows PCs and Chromebooks.

The caveat is that it's built around Apple's A18 Pro, which is a smartphone chip found in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, but with one less core. This has onlookers divided and that will likely remain the case until the MacBook Neo gets into the wild and is properly tested, benchmarked, and reviewed.

On the positive side, the A18 Pro is still an Apple Silicon design. We don't anticipate it will be stellar at heavy lifting, but for more casual uses, it will probably perform just fine. If you put much stock into Geekbench, early results show it outperforming the M1.

If you want to take a flier, the $25 gift card is a nice incentive on a MacBook that is already touting a mainstream price. Best Buy's return policy is pretty good, too.

Moving up the list, the new M5 MacBook Air is up for preorder starting at $1,099 at Best Buy and comes with a $50 gift card bonus. Obviously the price is quite a bit higher than the MacBook Neo, but it also targets a different demographic: those who need substantially more power.

The M5 is a serious chip with a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, and it underpins the latest MacBook Air. Apple also doubled the baseline storage to 512GB and says the SSD is twice as fast as the previous generation too, and equipped its latest MacBook Air with its N1 wireless chip that supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 6 connectivity. You also get dual Thunderbolt 4 ports and up to 18 hours of rated battery life.

Then there is the refreshed MacBook Pro with M5 Pro or M5 Max silicon. It's available to prerorder starting at $2,199 at Best Buy and comes with a $100 gift card. It's the most expensive new MacBook, but also the most performant and gets you the biggest gift card amount.

The MacBook Pro is built for professionals and enthusiasts who need more muscle for things like intense video editing and content creation. Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max feature up to an 18-core CPU (up from 16 cores on the M4 Max and 14 cores on the M4 Pro) comprised of 6 "super" cores and 12 performance cores. Apple says the performance uplift is up to 30% compared to the previous generation.

What's also interesting is that Apple went with a Fusion Architecture that connects a pair of 3-nanometer dies in a single SoC using advanced packaging.

One thing to note with all of these systems that Apple products often go on sale. That said, these gift card offers take some of the sting out of being an early adopter.