Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Apple’s MacBook Neo is impressive for its $600 price, but its A18 Pro processor is one of its biggest compromises compared to a modern MacBook Air—in our review, we found it was more than up to basic computing tasks, but for demanding workloads that benefit from more CPU and GPU cores and RAM, the Air is a better choice.

But those limited computing resources are still enough to run Windows on your Mac using the Parallels Desktop virtualization software—so says Parallels itself, which after some testing and benchmarking has declared the Neo suitable for “lightweight computing and everyday productivity, document editing, and web-based apps” while running Windows 11.

Parallels says the MacBook Neo’s respectable single-core CPU performance keeps the Neo feeling “quick and responsive” when running multiple Windows-only software packages, including QuickBooks Desktop and other accounting apps, Microsoft Office, “light engineering and data tools” including AutoCAD LT and MATLAB, and “Windows-only courseware and education software” with “no Mac equivalent.” In Parallels’ testing, the Neo’s single-core CPU performance in Windows was still roughly 20 percent faster compared to a Core Ultra 5 235U chip in a Dell Pro 14 laptop.

The Neo falls short in the same places it does in macOS—sustained multi-core CPU and GPU workloads and tasks that benefit from lots and lots of RAM. A Parallels support document notes that “CAD, 3D rendering, and graphics-heavy Windows applications are not recommended” on the Neo and that “running macOS and Windows simultaneously benefits from 16GB [of RAM] or more.” The Neo’s aggressive performance throttling under heavy load—something we tested extensively in our review—also keeps it from running these heavier applications well.

Virtual machines like the ones Parallels creates are quite resource-intensive because you’re running an entire second operating system on your computer, and that virtualized OS will compete with the host operating system for CPU time, RAM, and disk access. Further complicating things is the fact that you’re virtualizing the Arm version of Windows on an Apple Silicon Mac, and there’s additional performance overhead that comes from running older x86 Windows apps on an Arm chip (though Microsoft’s Prism translation layer and an influx of Arm-native Windows apps in recent years have made this situation a lot better than it used to be).

Parallels can run the x86 versions of Windows and Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, but the processor emulation required for that is even more performance-intensive than typical virtualization, making the Neo a bad fit.