Especially I am curious how Ableton will work. It wouldn’t be used as the main machine but as a mobile production station. Any users of this new computer here?

 

It will work, but it's low in RAM. Suitable for small projects.

There a thread on reddit about it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/comments/1rw0yhr/anyone_using_the_macbook_neo_with_ableton/?show=original

And a Youtube video test

 

A lot of people are gonna say that 8gb is not enough... And somehow I would agree... But:
I have a subnotebook with windows 11 that only has 8gb, and it does quite well. As long as I don't open 20 browser tabs besides Cubendo, everything is fine. I can run huge projects without issues. Second BUT:
I don't do samples. I have a lot of recorded tracks and softsynths. I guess it would be different if I used a lot of Kontakt.
//Edit// isn't there a MacBook air for just 100 bucks more that is waaay better? I didn't look into that, came up in some YouTube video

 

Depends on the music. For basic techno loop and DJ stuff it's fine, probably for recording a band as well; but for Orchestral libraries and symphonic stuff the 8GB will not go very far.

 

Macbook Air M1 still outperforms it for audio, it's amazing little machine and you can pretty much get base model in great condition for much less and 16/512 for the price of Neo (found one locally with 92% of battery in perfect condition for 550 bucks). Also M1 Air is actually thinner and ergonomics are better, dunno, Neo makes no sense for audio IMO over M1 Air, if they at least matched all the specs completely, then sure, but right now you can find sealed base M1 Air for the price of Neo and call it a day.

 

Last edited: Mar 26, 2026 at 2:13 PM

just search for 5 years old threads of: is M1 MacBook Air with 8GB and 256GB enough for whatever
then remove backlit keyboard, remove thunderbolt support, and you basically get the answer

EDIT: base model M5 Air with 16GB and 512GB is enough better

 

and remove 2P cores too

Yeah, M5 is the first "double" leap from M1, double the RAM (amount and speed), SSD (amount and speed) and CPU performance (just speed, same amount)

 

Last edited: Mar 26, 2026 at 2:24 PM

problem is performance of an A18 P core is better than M1 P core,
so really depends on how a specific DAW version handles the P and E cores,
James Zhan does such comparisons at YouTube, not sure if he did MB Neo yet - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesZhan

 

It's an excellent mobile sketch pad.

 

He didn't, but the guy in the video I posted did Logic and M1 pulled double the amount of tracks, also A18 P cores aren't really that much faster, but lack of two actual P cores makes bigger difference than slight speed increase.

 

why does everyone do these idiotic soyjak facial expressions

 

Great machine, great value for anything that requires DSP horsepower. For working mostly with samplers, I'd rather have a slower machine with more RAM.

 

It's a great laptop. Should be enough for sketching. Logic should run smooth.

 

You can get a 2025 M4 MacBook Air for 200 more bucks. I think that's a far better deal than a MacBook Neo and will get you much further. Without student discount the price difference is even smaller.

 

The Neo is most certinaly good for music production. I already surpoasses the intel macs and even the first M1. It is a bit slower than the non-pro M4. That means it has great potential for effective music production. Maybe it won't host 100 tracks of plugins...but that's not realistic for most people anyway. Considering that I made full songs on a 2018 iPad Pro using Audio Unit synths like Sunrizer, Model 15, and all the Sugar Bytes iOS apps, the NEO is much more capable.

Just don't expect 128 track instances of Kontakt for Orchestral. 8GB of ram still goes a long way! Look at all the MPCs and the MAschine+ for reference of RAM limitations vs productive output.

 

Back at the turn of the century, I was able to record and mix my band's 20 track demo with an Event Gina box, Cool Edit Pro, and an Intel 233MHz (with MMX!) PC with 64MB of RAM and an 8GB HDD on Windows 98. I think the Neo will suffice. :D

 

Recommending 8 GB of RAM for a Mac, especially for someone who hasn’t used the platform, is shortsighted. It’s enough to open Logic, but not enough to work freely without constantly managing resources. Once you start loading multiple plugins, soft synths, or sample libraries, the system will hit memory limits, start swapping, and performance will plummet. People quickly get used to the smooth, headache-free experience MacOS for audio production, and at that point, 8 GB becomes a bottleneck. Your PC ends up as a server or spreadsheet machine, and the Mac never feels “fast enough.” For most workflows, 16 GB is a safer goalpost

I'd get the 16gb RAM most Mac users for audio will recommend. For me that would be a minimum. I wouldn't bother to spend the money to buy a computer I know I will want to upgrade or replace the same day I finally figure out how to use it.

 

Depends on the use case, I survived last 10 years with 8GB of RAM and with 4GB before that, but yeah, I'm not using Native Instruments, just synths and drop occasionally some drum one shot and slice a loop, lately I crossed into swap because of Nebula, but that's different rabbit hole. But for sketchpad and for non Kontakt folks, 8GB is enough, my full projects without Nebula don't cross 6GB of RAM, Bitwig is RAM hog tho, but hey, that's just me.

But today, 16GB is probably minimum, macOS isn't getting lighter and for folks who need to follow most developers, you are going to need it anyways, as they keep bumping minimal requirements like crazy.

 

Last edited: Mar 26, 2026 at 6:00 PM

You also already know what you are doing. It's almost a paradox that you would want a mobile computer for production that you have to do all the usual tricks to optimize your system, but even moreso your sessions. If the idea of the whole thing is producing on a plane, at a hotel, in your kitchen, to me the last thing you want to be doing is freezing and bouncing tracks. Nothing kills creative productivity like having to do administrative stuff like that while trying to capture your ideas. Besides my main DAW computer, I have 2 i7 cpu-based Macs, one with 16gb and the other with 32gb, and while it is not "night and day", it's pretty close to it.

If you remember further back in a different thread, you are saying that you got better performance on the same Mac, with MacOS Monterey than with more "modern" versions of MacOS. One of the reasons for that is because newer MacOS versions do have higher memory usage.
The problem with that is he's not going to even have that option. Anything shipping currently has Tahoe on it, and that is the earliest version of MacOS that will even install if he did want to downgrade to it. You cannot use a tool like OCLP to downgrade a Mac to earlier macOS versions than the computer shipped with, right? So if it ships today, your minimum MacOS version is Tahoe. full stop.