Skip The MacBook Neo And Grab These Prime Day Laptop Deals Instead

Look, we are not hating on the MacBook Neo and once our review of Apple's budget laptop goes live (soon!), you will see all the reasons why we think it's a suitable machine for the money. At the same time, the MacBook is not the only sub-$1,000 option around. There are plenty of capable Windows machines at similar price points, especially now that Prime Day bargains have arrived. Here is what we found.

One alternative to the MacBook Neo is the Dell 15 (D15260) that is on sale for $599.99 at Amazon (19% off, save $140). It is priced the same as the MSRP for the baseline MacBook Neo (not including Apple's $100 education discount, if applicable) and serves up a bigger 15.6-inch display with a 1920x1080 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, and 300 nits of brightness.

It's built around Intel's Core Ultra 5 225U processor based on Arrow Lake. That's a 12-core chip comprised of 2 performance cores clocked at 1.5GHz to 4.8GHz, 8 efficient cores clocked at 1.3GHz to 3.8GHz, and 2 low power efficiency cores running at 700MHz to 4.8GHz. It also boasts 12MB of L3 cache, a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) capable of 12 TOPS, and integrated graphics with four Xe cores clocked at 2GHz, which add another 8 TOPS to the AI mix.

You also get 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive on this model, both of which are double what is found in the baseline MacBook Neo.

If you have a little more to spend on a laptop and want a discrete GPU, then check out the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 that is on sale for $789.99 for Prime Day (34% off, save $410). That's an all-time low price for this laptop, and it puts ahead just $90 above the higher-end MacBook Neo configuration.

This one is geared towards gamers on a budget. It features a 16-inch IPS display with a 1920x1200 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio) and 144Hz refresh rate, and is powered by an Intel Core 5 210H processor (8C/12T, up to 4.8GHz, 12MB of L3 cache) based on Raptor Lake and a GeForce RTX 4050.

While the RTX 4050 is not going to set any blistering benchmark records, it's a discrete chip that affords access to RTX wizardly such as DLSS.

You also get 16GB of DDR5 memory, a 512GB SSD, Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, a backlit keyboard, and aggressive styling with MIL-STD-810H durability.

If you're enabled by Windows on Arm, this Acer Aspire 16 AI Copilot+ PC for $578.99 at Amazon (17% off, save $120.10) is an affordable option.

This one also sports a 16-inch display with a 1920x1200 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio), albeit with a 120Hz refresh rate and multi-touch support.

Being an Arm-based machine, the Aspire 16 AI flexes a Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) processor with a dedicated NPU capable of up to 45 TOPS, along with 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity.

Here are a few more discounted alternatives to the MacBook Neo:

• 14-Inch HP OmniBook 3 (Snapdragon X, 16GB/512GB): $699.99 (28% off)
• 16-Inch Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (Ryzen AI 5 340, 16GB/1TB): $649.99 (22% off)
• 14-Inch ASUS Vivobook 14 (Ryzen AI 7 350, 16GB/512GB): $594.99 (30% off)