- AMD has a new marketing campaign criticizing the MacBook Neo
- The main point of the argument is that the Neo fails as a gaming laptop
- It’s a very confusing angle to take, as that’s not what MacBooks are all about – and especially not the budget-friendly Neo
AMD appears to be getting defensive about its Windows 11 laptops and the threat of Apple’s MacBook Neo.
Tom’s Hardware noted that AMD has a new marketing campaign that intends to take the Neo down a notch or two, promoting the benefits of Ryzen AI CPUs instead.
AMD insists that: “The competition compromised. You don’t have to.” It then adds that: “Everything the MacBook Neo leaves out, built in with AMD Ryzen AI processors.”
The main thrust of the compromise announcements is that the MacBook Neo isn’t quite up to par for gaming. AMD notes that 15 of the top 20 PC games don’t run natively on a MacBook Neo and that you need ‘workarounds’ (emulation) to play them. The games have been chosen by Team Red themselves, though it’s a fair selection of esports classics and more modern efforts like Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 6 and Black Ops 7.
Of course, it’s not just about games, but that’s the main element here. AMD also points out that Windows 11 laptops with its Ryzen AI CPUs can have touchscreens (which the MacBook Neo doesn’t), and a better selection of ports than the MacBook Neo’s two USB-C connectors.
AMD then highlights benchmarks for the Ryzen 5 220 against Apple’s A18 processor as seen in the Neo, where both laptops have 8GB of RAM, but Ryzen is up to 57% faster for multitasking and 38% faster for content creation as measured in Blender and Cinebench, among others.
Analysis: confusion over compromises
This is really strange, because what many confused people on Reddit have said – echoing my own initial thought – is, “I didn’t buy a Mac to play games. That’s not really what they’re for.”
Someone else in that thread agrees: “Ok, but nobody buys a MacBook for gaming, do they?”
And a further Redditor notes: “Imagine if ‘Macs don’t play’ is the best thing you got lol. I’d fire my marketing team.”
These people are of course absolutely right. You don’t buy a MacBook for gaming, and you especially don’t buy a MacBook Neo for PC gaming. This is not just an Apple laptop, but a low-cost one with a mobile chip designed solely to be affordable (mainly for students) and capable of handling daily computing workloads – and that’s it.
Okay, so you might want to play a casual game, but the MacBook Neo can handle that just fine. What you’re not going to do on a Neo is play the best PC games, not unless you’re very delusional, and okay, probably a few people out there fall into that category.
So why AMD has led with this game angle in its Ryzen AI laptop marketing, versus MacBook Neo marketing, is really a head scratcher. It’s not like the kind of Windows 11 laptops that AMD uses as a comparison to the Neo, in a similar price range, can run the best PC games that well anyway.
AMD has of course chosen its ‘top games’ very carefully, which goes without saying. But still, the integrated Radeon 760M graphics (used in the comparative benchmarking) can’t come close to running some of these games with any kind of fluidity, even at low details (at the Full HD resolution at which the test was performed).
The same cherry-picking applies to productivity and creativity benchmarks, and the thing about the MacBook Neo is that, as we’ve seen at TechRadar, despite only having 8GB of RAM, it runs smoothly and responsively in everyday tasks. That’s not something you can always say about a Windows 11 laptop with 8GB of RAM in the same price range.
Granted, Microsoft is busy working on making Windows 11 better with lower RAM load, but Apple is not standing still either, providing a nice performance boost with the recently launched beta of macOS 27.
AMD should have put more thought into the placement of this marketing piece, especially given that it’s Neo that the company is going after. The truth is, when it comes to gaming, you shouldn’t expect much from any budget-friendly laptop – although what you get from a Windows 11 machine is obviously a better deal, thanks to said game compatibility without the need for emulation tricks.
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