Budget MacBook Neo Surprises as a Gaming Machine: How It Handles 10 Popular Games

By: Anton Kratiuk | today, 13:19

Bloggers are actively exploring the capabilities of the MacBook Neo — Apple's first budget laptop. It costs $600 and uses the A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 as its hardware platform. The company positions the novelty as the ideal computer for everyday tasks, work, and study, but surprisingly, the Neo also performed well as a gaming device.

What is known

YouTube blogger Andrew Tsai tested how 10 different games run on the Neo.

For the test, the blogger took titles natively available on Mac (Cyberpunk 2077 and some parts of Resident Evil) as well as Windows games he ran through CrossOver.

Results

  • Cyberpunk 2077 runs on the lowest graphics settings and at 720p resolution. In calm scenes, performance exceeds 30 fps, but in dynamic episodes, it drops significantly.
  • Minecraft (Java Edition) — runs steadily at 50–300 fps at 1080p resolution with and without shaders.
  • World of Warcraft at 1080p resolution delivers 30–60 fps depending on the number of characters on screen. The game runs stably.
  • The dynamic action game Control launched on low settings at 1080p with performance of 30–60 fps.
  • The situation with the latest game Resident Evil Requiem is interesting — it hasn't been officially ported to Mac yet, but it was managed to launch through the CrossOver program. The result was poor: it's impossible to play even at low graphics settings in 720p due to the extremely low RAM of the MacBook Neo — only 8 GB.
  • Other parts of Resident Evil, which have been officially ported to Mac, showed good results — the author managed to launch RE 2 Remake at 60 fps with medium graphics settings at 1080p resolution. Presumably, other Resident Evil remakes, as well as the 7th and 8th parts, will work the same, as they are technically identical.
  • Counter-Strike 2 and Elden Ring were also launched through CrossOver, but playing them was impossible.
  • Dark Souls Remastered and Mewgenics were not intimidated by the modest specifications of the Neo and could quite be played through CrossOver with decent graphics settings.
  • As an experiment, the blogger tried to launch The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom through a Switch emulator, but got unsatisfactory results — the MacBook Neo's processor is not enough. However, Andrew Tsai believes that less demanding Switch games will perform better.

Source: Andrew Tsai