I compared three Windows laptops priced like the MacBook Neo — the results are clear.

When the MacBook Neo hit the scene last month, it sent shockwaves through the Windows laptop market. Priced at $599, the Neo boasts impressive build quality and performance in a sleek, ultra-portable design. In contrast, Windows laptops in this price bracket often come off as unattractive, flimsy, and sluggish.

Despite the buzz surrounding it for years, the MacBook Neo still caught many in the Windows community off guard. I anticipate that competitors will emerge soon, but I wanted to gauge the current landscape of PC alternatives.

I reached out to several laptop manufacturers to see how their offerings stack up against the MacBook Neo.

The MacBook Neo features a 13-inch, 2.7-pound all-aluminum chassis, powered by an A18 Pro chip and equipped with 8GB of RAM, starting with 256GB of slower storage. It retails for $599 (or $499 for students and educators), and for an additional $100, you can double the storage and add a Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the power button. There are no all-aluminum, 13-inch Windows laptops available for $600. The Windows laptops I tested typically have MSRPs above $600 but are often available at lower prices.

Asus provided a $700 Vivobook 16 with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor (currently $530), Lenovo offered a $750 IdeaPad Slim 3x with a Snapdragon X chip (currently $550), and Acer sent an Intel Lunar Lake Aspire 14 AI, which has dropped from $1,050 to just $530. Dell and HP were in between laptop generations and didn’t have any current models to share.

By Windows budget laptop standards, these options are decent values. On paper, they should be competitive, featuring eight-core processors (compared to the Neo’s six), 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB, and storage options ranging from 256GB to 1TB — with the slowest being twice as fast as the Neo’s storage.

Starting with the least expensive, the Asus Vivobook is a bulky 16-inch laptop with a cheap, plasticky feel. Its chassis creaks and flexes with the slightest touch. While the large screen is a plus, the visuals are dull, dim, and slightly blurry. A 1920 x 1200 resolution is acceptable on a 14-inch display, but stretched across 16 inches, it falls short.

The trackpad produces a loud, hollow sound with each click, and the keyboard feels somewhat mushy. The speakers are also disappointing, making music and podcasts sound flat. During video calls, the 720p webcam delivered a low-res, grainy image, struggling with backlighting and often making me look overly bright.

The Vivobook’s AMD Ryzen 7 7730U processor has eight cores, but the Neo outpaces it by 75%. While the Ryzen chip handles light tasks like web browsing and basic applications, it can lag when opening apps, even with 16GB of RAM. Battery life is also underwhelming; during a typical workday of mixed usage, it lasted a maximum of six hours. However, it does offer a solid port selection, including three USB-A ports (one 2.0 and two 3.2), a headphone jack, HDMI 1.4, and a USB-C port that can also charge the device.

The $749.99 Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x features a slightly smaller, better-quality screen than the Vivobook and is the only touchscreen option among the group. However, at 300 nits, the 15.3-inch display is still dim and of mediocre quality. The keyboard is a highlight, offering a tactile feel and decent key travel, but that’s where the positives end.

The trackpad is stiff and sometimes hard to click, and the speakers are the worst of the bunch. I enjoy listening to electronic music for focus, but the speakers are so thin and treble-heavy that they detracted from the experience.

The IdeaPad Slim is powered by an efficient Arm-based Snapdragon X1-26-100 chip. While it’s the entry-level option in Qualcomm’s X1 lineup, it performs adequately for everyday tasks. However, users may encounter occasional app compatibility issues, though these are becoming increasingly rare for typical computing needs.

A standout feature of the IdeaPad is its battery life, easily lasting a full workday and beyond on a single charge. It excelled in our battery rundown web-browsing test, running for over 21 hours. You can confidently leave the charger at home, which is a plus since it also uses a barrel plug. The port selection is decent, with a USB-C charging port, two 5Gbps USB-A ports, HDMI 1.4, a 3.5mm audio jack, and even an SD card slot.

The Acer Aspire 14 AI is the smallest and fastest of the Windows laptops I tested, boasting the most features, likely due to its original $1,050 price tag. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 256V “Lunar Lake” processor outperforms the other two Windows laptops, though it still lags behind the Neo in single-core tasks. When plugged in, it can even handle some gaming, allowing for competitive play in titles like Marathon on low settings. Battery life is good, lasting nearly 12 hours during light use, though it doesn’t match the Lenovo’s longevity.

The Acer’s chip is a significant part of its value, along with its port selection. While all three Windows laptops offer more ports than the MacBook Neo, only the Aspire 14 includes Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI 2.1. The rest of the laptop is just okay; the speakers are still subpar, the keyboard doesn’t match the Lenovo’s quality, but it has enough key travel to feel decent. The trackpad is also acceptable compared to the Asus and Lenovo, though it still has a plasticky sound when clicked, and the laptop’s deck flexes under pressure.

However, the Acer’s biggest drawback is its display. The 1920 x 1200 resolution on the 14-inch LCD panel is adequate, but it appears washed out, with noticeable light bleed along the edges, particularly in darker scenes.

The shortcomings of these Windows laptops — lackluster displays, poor audio quality, and mediocre trackpads — are common in this price range. But the game has changed with the MacBook Neo, which excels in quality-of-life features. It offers a brighter, more vibrant screen, a responsive trackpad, a decent webcam, and speakers that don’t disappoint. Plus, it has a hinge that opens smoothly with one finger, unlike the Windows laptops that tend to snap shut or slide around.

While this trio of Windows laptops each has 16GB of RAM compared to the Neo’s 8GB, it hardly makes a difference in real-world use. They can also slow down with multiple Chrome tabs open, just like the Neo. In our Premiere 4K export test, the Neo even outperformed the Lenovo and Asus, despite having less RAM and being completely fanless.

The MacBook Neo stands out as the clear choice among these four laptops. It has its own challenges; it can slow down with too many Chrome tabs or heavy multitasking in demanding applications like Lightroom. However, its single-core performance surpasses any Windows laptop here, making it more than capable for most users. It’s colorful, fun, and its overall hardware quality is impressive for this price range, with the minor exception of its non-backlit keyboard. If I had to choose a Windows model from this selection, I’d opt for the Acer Aspire 14 AI, but I’d also connect a mouse and keyboard, plug it into a monitor and speakers, and use it that way as often as possible (though that would push it out of the “budget” category if you don’t already own those peripherals). It offers solid performance and port options, but not the best hardware quality.

For some, a good Chromebook like the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is worth considering. While it doesn’t quite match the MacBook Neo, it comes close with a beautiful OLED screen, a tactile keyboard, decent speakers, and excellent battery life. ChromeOS is suitable for those who primarily work in a browser or are comfortable enabling its Linux virtual machine for additional apps. It’s my favorite Chromebook, but I’d still choose the Neo for its value.

At this price point, there’s simply no rival to the Neo. There’s Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 13-inch, which is comparable in build quality but still falls short of the Neo’s A18 Pro chip in single-core performance, starting at $900, though it can often be found for less. In the $1,200-plus range (where you find Asus Zenbooks, Lenovo Yoga Slims, and the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop), the quality improves with better builds, OLED screens, and higher-end chips, but then you’re also up against the MacBook Airs.

I’ve heard whispers that some PC laptop manufacturers are planning to release true competitors to the Neo this year, but it will be a challenge for any PC brand to match its price and hardware quality. Apple’s vertical integration, complete with its own operating system and in-house chip, gives it an edge. PC makers need to find a way to stop cutting corners on screens, trackpads, and speakers without raising prices, which will be tough, especially now. If they can’t, the Neo will continue to be the go-to choice.