- AMD has a new marketing campaign criticizing the MacBook Neo
- The main thrust of the argument is that the Neo fails as a gaming laptop
- That’s a highly confusing angle to take, seeing as this isn’t what MacBooks are about – and especially not the budget-friendly Neo
AMD appears to be getting defensive about its Windows 11 laptops and the threat posed by Apple’s MacBook Neo.
Tom’s Hardware noticed 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 made compromises. You don’t have to.” It then adds that: “Everything MacBook Neo leaves out, built in with AMD Ryzen AI processors.”
Latest Videos From
The main thrust of the compromise messaging is that the MacBook Neo isn’t up to scratch 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 are picked by Team Red itself, although it’s a fair enough selection of esports classics and more modern efforts such as Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 6, and Black Ops 7.
It’s not just about games, of course, but that’s the lead item 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 port selection than the MacBook Neo’s two USB-C connectors.
You may like
AMD then highlights benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 220 against Apple‘s A18 processor as seen in the Neo, where both laptops have 8GB of RAM, but the 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
(Image credit: AMD)
This is an odd one, really, because what plenty of confused people on Reddit have been saying – echoing my own first thought – is: “I didn’t buy a Mac to play games. That’s not really what they’re for.”
{ window.reliablePageLoad.then(() => { var componentContainer = document.querySelector(“#slice-container-newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-YrKrSTSqvfwKtTqMcRJbsM”); if (componentContainer) { var data = {“layout”:”inbodyContent”,”header”:”Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox”,”tagline”:”Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.”,”formFooterText”:”By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.”,”usDisclaimerFooterText”:”By signing up, you agree to our Terms of services and acknowledge that you have read our Privacy Notice. You also agree to receive marketing emails from us that may include promotions from our trusted partners and sponsors, which you can unsubscribe from at any time.”,”successMessage”:{“body”:”Thank you for signing up. You will receive a confirmation email shortly.”},”failureMessage”:”There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.”,”method”:”POST”,”inputs”:[{“type”:”hidden”,”name”:”NAME”},{“type”:”email”,”name”:”MAIL”,”placeholder”:”Your Email Address”,”required”:true},{“type”:”hidden”,”name”:”NEWSLETTER_CODE”,”value”:”XTR-D”},{“type”:”hidden”,”name”:”LANG”,”value”:”EN”},{“type”:”hidden”,”name”:”SOURCE”,”value”:”60″},{“type”:”hidden”,”name”:”COUNTRY”},{“type”:”checkbox”,”name”:”CONTACT_OTHER_BRANDS”,”label”:{“text”:”Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands”}},{“type”:”checkbox”,”name”:”CONTACT_PARTNERS”,”label”:{“text”:”Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors”}},{“type”:”submit”,”value”:”Sign me up”,”required”:true}],”endpoint”:”https://www.techradar.com/.newsletter-subscribe/v2/submission/submit”,”analytics”:[{“analyticsType”:”widgetViewed”}],”ariaLabels”:{}}; var triggerHydrate = function() { window.sliceComponents.newsletterForm.hydrate(data, componentContainer); } if (window.lazyObserveElement) { window.lazyObserveElement(componentContainer, triggerHydrate); } else { triggerHydrate(); } } }).catch(err => console.error(‘%c FTE ‘,’background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff’,’Hydration Script has failed for newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-YrKrSTSqvfwKtTqMcRJbsM Slice’, err)); }).catch(err => console.error(‘%c FTE ‘,’background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff’,’Externals script failed to load’, err)); ]]>
Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.
Someone else on that thread agrees: “Ok, but no one is buying a MacBook for gaming, right?”
And a further Redditor observes: “Imagine if ‘Macs don’t game’ is the best you’ve got, lol. I’d fire my marketing team.”
These folks are, of course, quite right. You don’t buy a MacBook for gaming, and moreover, you especially don’t buy a MacBook Neo for PC games. This isn’t just an Apple laptop, but a low-end one with a mobile chip designed entirely around being affordable (for students, mainly) and able to cope with daily computing workloads – and that’s all.
What to read next
Okay, so you might want to do a spot of casual gaming, but the MacBook Neo can cope with that just fine. What you aren’t going to be looking to do on a Neo is play the top PC games, not unless you’re very misguided, and okay, probably a few people out there do fall into this category.
So why AMD has led with this gaming angle in its Ryzen AI laptop marketing, versus MacBook Neo marketing, really is a head-scratcher. It isn’t like the kind of Windows 11 laptops AMD is using as comparisons to the Neo, in a similar price bracket, can run those top PC games all that well, anyway.
Of course, AMD has chosen its ‘top games’ very carefully, which goes without saying. But still, the Radeon 760M integrated graphics (used in the comparative benchmarking) can’t come close to running some of these games with any kind of fluidity, even with low details (at the Full HD resolution in which the testing was conducted).
The same cherry-picking applies to the 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 bracket.
Granted, Microsoft is busy working on making Windows 11 better with lower RAM loadouts, but Apple isn’t standing still either, providing quite a performance boost with the recently launched beta of macOS 27.
AMD should’ve thought more about the positioning of this marketing piece, especially seeing as it’s the Neo the company is going after. The truth is that, as far as gaming is concerned, you shouldn’t expect much out of any budget-friendly laptop – even if what you get from a Windows 11 machine is obviously a better deal, thanks to the mentioned game compatibility with no need for emulation tricks.
Follow TechRadar on Google News andadd us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.
The best laptops for all budgets
Our top picks, based on real-world testing and comparisons
Source