Be cautious if you intend to use your new MacBook Neo in this manner; you may regret purchasing it.
The introduction of Apple's MacBook Neo was a significant milestone in the laptop industry. It's one of the most highly recommended laptops on the market, with a great price-to-performance ratio.tio. However, it's not perfect, and it's not for everyone. While its A18 Pro chip is sufficient for running desktop applications, handling large screens, and providing smooth multitasking, it does have some limitations. What are these limitations? We don't know yet, but there's one thing to consider before buying it.
No, this has nothing to do with its performance when used as a laptop. Let me explain: one of the most common uses for Apple MacBooks, and Windows laptops in general, is to connect them to an external monitor to work on a desktop while still utilizing the laptop's full capabilities when needed.
Actually, I've been using this method for years. I don't own a desktop computer. I connect my MacBook Air M2 to an external monitor via USB-C and use it as a Mac Pro or Mac Mini. Couldn't I do the same with a MacBook Neo? Yes, you can, but there are a few important things to keep in mind.
With the MacBook Neo, there's a clear premise: as yet, no one knows which processes it will be able to run quickly and smoothly without performance issues or overheating. We can make some estimates, and the most accurate one currently is the benchmark test, which shows that the performance of the A18 Pro processor in the MacBook Neo is "similar" to that of the MacBook Air M1 processor. However, it is slightly less powerful (the A18 Pro processor), and its cores are slower.
Well, as a MacBook Air user with an external display, I can confirm that some Apple devices, especially over time, don't handle demanding tasks and upscaling the external display efficiently. This is exacerbated when using two displays simultaneously: the device's screen and the external one.
You may not know this, but connecting an external monitor to your MacBook is not simply a matter of mirroring the screen: the computer has to resize the image (depending on the monitor's resolution), and this consumes GPU and CPU resources that are not being used, for example, by the photo-editing software you are running.
The result is always the same: when you connect a laptop to an external monitor, its overall performance drops because it has to allocate resources to duplicate and enlarge images. And if you then open the MacBook to use two monitors, the situation worsens. This isn't the case with the Pro or Air M4 models, but with the MacBook Neo, this practice might lead to some issues.
Does this mean the MacBook Neo will perform poorly when connected to an external monitor? No. In fact, its USB-C 3 port supports 4K 60Hz connections for this purpose, but keep in mind that browsing the user interface or watching videos doesn't replace using the computer for more demanding tasks.
While the MacBook Neo is not recommended for anyone who wants to edit video or even use it professionally in a simple way, the reviews you may see in the next few days could mislead you.
You may see the MacBook Neo open Photoshop smoothly and work on large projects, but that experience may change drastically when trying to do the same thing when connected to an external monitor.
If you're going to buy a MacBook Neo to use with an external monitor, which you certainly can, my recommendation is to choose a Full HD panel and never choose 4K, because the load of upgrading the graphics processing unit will be less, and its overall performance will be roughly on par with laptop mode.