The MacBook Neo is the laptop Google can't build

The newly announced Apple MacBook Neo is full of surprises. First, the $599 price tag is delightfully affordable in today’s economy. Secondly, it’s built on the last-generation flagship smartphone chip — the Apple A18 Pro — paired with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. In that sense, it looks like smartphone hardware unleashed to run at full tilt in a laptop form factor. Apple claims it’s faster than an unspecified Intel Core Ultra 5 laptop, which certainly sounds impressive.

In some ways, the MacBook Neo is the sort of laptop Google would love to have built. It’s affordable, lightweight, and designed to blast through browsing and office tasks. The very same users Google has been catering to with Chromebooks for what seems like eons. Google is even in early planning to unify mobile and desktop landscapes with Aluminium OS (a version of Android), hinting at a future where the same hardware in your phone also powers your Android PC. That’s basically the Neo.

However, as much as Google has empowered the affordable computing market, it’s failed to build a breakthrough piece of hardware of its own. Chromebooks rely on third-party chipsets (usually Intel) and on vendors such as Acer and Samsung to bring them to store shelves. The closest we’ve come to end-to-end Google computing hardware recently is 2023’s Pixel Tablet, but it was closer to a smart display/tablet hybrid than something you would use for serious work. It’s only just received Desktop Windowing as part of the March 2026 Pixel Drop. Neither has there been an attempt to reignite 2017’s Pixel Book or 2018’s Pixel Slate with Google’s in-house Tensor processor.

Clearly, Google can build products — its portfolio already spans audio, phones, tablets, and TV boxes. But to build its own Neo, Google is missing a processor powerful enough to span the energy efficiency of mobile with the performance required for desktop computing. Unfortunately, Google’s in-house Tensor project is just not in the same league as Apple’s A-series chips — not even the last-gen A18 Pro.

The Tensor problem rears its head again

No one said building chips would be easy, but Tensor has consistently proven underwhelming for performance enthusiasts. Not to mention its predecessor’s trouble with energy efficiency and connectivity reliability. Today’s flagship Tensor G5 chip benchmarks closer to 2022’s Apple A16 Bionic and is marginally faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 of the same year. It’s easily two generations behind the Neo’s processor.

What separates today’s fastest smartphone chips from those just a few years old is a giant leap in single-threaded performance and clock speeds that far surpass the 4GHz mark. Plus, these powerhouse cores are now deployed as dual large cores rather than single-core configurations. While perhaps overkill for most mobile tasks, a couple of powerhouse cores are essential for loading and quickly switching between those more demanding PC applications.

Apple’s deployment of the Arm architecture has grown increasingly sophisticated to the point that it’s been able to drop Intel for even its most powerful MacBooks. Hot on its heels, Qualcomm’s custom Arm cores have jumped in performance too, derivatives of which power both the Snapdragon 8 Elite series for phones and the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite for laptops. Google could buy chips from Qualcomm, but even the Snapdragon X2 Plus series is too expensive to bundle at the $599 price point of the MacBook Neo.

Meanwhile, the Google Tensor G5 has only a single aging 3.78GHz Arm Cortex-X4 for high performance. A fine CPU for smartphones, but a long way behind today’s fastest mobile setups. The next-gen Tensor G6 is reported to use a single Arm C1-Ultra and six smaller cores, so it seems doubtful this chip will close the gap. Graphics is another problem for Google, as it’s opted for budget-conscious PowerVR DXT and CXT cores for its current and next-gen chips. Meanwhile, Apple and Qualcomm have built scalable, high-performance GPU architectures that arguably outstrip the thermal constraints of the smartphone form factor.

Those who noted (myself included) that Google’s Tensor project delivers sufficient performance for flagship smartphones certainly aren’t wrong. The best from Apple and Qualcomm really are overkill for doomscrolling, checking email, and even playing the latest mobile games. However, their investment in cutting-edge performance is now allowing them to bridge the gap between phones and laptops in a way that Google simply can’t.

The future of phones as PCs

This isn’t to say all hope is lost. Android is about to embark on an interesting PC experiment of its very own with Pixel’s new Desktop Mode. When I dabbled with the beta on my Pixel 9 Pro XL a few months back, the experience was plenty responsive for web browsing, checking email, sending messages, and the like. Granted, that’s not exactly video editing or compiling code, but it goes to show that even today’s more modest performers can double up as a light PC in a pinch. Give it a couple more generations, and Google’s chips might offer Apple-tier performance to match.

Between the launch of Desktop Mode and Aluminium OS plans for later this year, Google’s efforts to bridge the software gap between your palm and your lap are moving at pace. Ideally, it will have its own in-house hardware to showcase the arrival of this brave new world. But in lieu of conjuring a much faster Tensor out of nowhere, Google might end up relying on its partners to join up the hardware dots.

In the meantime, the $599 MacBook Neo might just have stolen Google’s thunder. At the very least, it’ll certainly cause Chromebook manufacturers a few headaches.