There's been a lot of press about how the new MacBook Neo performs on one photo or video task or another, and largely the consensus has been that it can do a number of things, but not all things. Well, what does that mean in actual raw data?
Photographer and YouTuber Art Suwansang, of ArtIsRight, didn't just settle for seat-of-the-pants impressions when it came to benchmarking the MacBook Neo. On his YouTube channel, he subjected it to a battery of tests through some prime multimedia software for creators, namely Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.
But what's a benchmark without some competition? In what's probably one of the most detailed, comprehensive tests out there, Suwansang put the A18 Pro chip in the Neo against machines sporting nearly every variant of the M5 chip. But he didn't stop there, where you'd expect an A18 Pro to lose anyway. He compared it to every previous generation of Apple Silicon, from the M4 all the way back to the M1. Suwansang posts a detailed list of the rigs tested near the start of the video. If there had been some Intel-based processors in there from a previous generation, that would have really been illuminating, but suffice to say, in many different ways the A18 Pro performed very close to an original M1. It makes a compelling case to buy a new machine rather than rolling the dice with something used.
Check out the video above for more. If graphs and numbers aren't your thing, Fstoppers' own Lee Morris does a deep-dive stress test into each of the currently available MacBooks side-by-side. Where the numbers tell part of the story, watching the Neo (mostly) hold up against its more expensive stablemates is another.
All in all, it seems like the Neo might actually be a viable tool for photographers on a budget, if these early tests are any indication. Do you plan to use a Neo for your photography? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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