iFixit’s MacBook Neo Teardown

iFixit:

Is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever also one of its most repairable? For years, opening a MacBook has usually meant fighting your way through glue and buried parts.

But the Neo stands out, with increasingly good day-one manuals, less-painful keyboard repairs, and a screwed-in battery tray that sent cheers across the iFixit office. This laptop proves that things can be made more affordable and more repairable at the same time.

That conclusion is backwards, I think. I suspect the MacBook Neo is more repairable not despite of its lower price, but because of its lower price. It’s designed and engineered to be easier, and thus cheaper, to assemble. And the aspects that make it easier to assemble make it easier to disassemble.

Regarding the Neo’s 2.7-pound weight:

We were all a bit curious as to why the cheaper and less feature rich Neo weighed the same as a MacBook Air M3, each 13″ laptop weighing in at about 1.24kg. It’s especially puzzling when considering the Neo supposedly uses a lighter chassis, and is, uh, smaller.

Here’s what we found: The Neo’s chassis is actually only barely lighter than the Air’s. Together, its chassis, keyboard, and bottom cover are just 8g lighter than the Air’s. But the Neo’s screen is 48g heavier, and the solid chunk of metal that supports its trackpad makes up 7% of the laptop’s overall weight! The Neo’s full trackpad assembly is almost exactly twice as heavy as the M3 MacBook Air’s, too.

★ Saturday, 14 March 2026