After months of rumors, Apple At the beginning of the month it presented its economical laptop, the MacBook Neo. The device, which is part of €699offers a lot for its price and has been very well received, although with the weak point of memory RAM. 8GB It is usually considered a low amount on a computer, scarce for daily tasks and even more so for tasks with virtual machines, but, despite this, Parallels claims that the Neo can run many Windows applications without problems.
Parallels Desktopone of the most popular virtualization applications in macOSallows you to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems directly on a Macwithout needing to reboot. Parallels has announced that it is now fully compatible with the new MacBook Neo and with the Macbook Air with chip M5. The company claims that customers can use Parallels Desktop to run legacy and essential Windows applications on their Macs with ‘cross-platform flexibility’.
As for performance, Parallels says the Neo offers Better CPU performance on a single corecompared to the Dell Pro 14 with processor Intel Core Ultra 5 235U and 16 GB of RAM, running Windows 11 natively. However, the Dell Pro 14 beats the Neo in multi-core tasks. In the first case, the Neo runs Windows applications in Parallels Desktop a 20% faster than the Dell Pro 14 natively, while on the second it is about a 40% worse. Graphics performance is also inferior, with the Dell Pro 14 outperforming the MacBook Neo by 50%.
This means that the MacBook Neo is very fast when handling tasks that use one or a few cores, so common Windows programs will feel fluid and responsive. Parallels highlights its good performance in productivity applications such as officeweb applications and browser-based tools, business productivity software, and in light development and testing workflows.
It is not recommended for Windows applications such as CAD3D rendering or with a high graphic load. In general, advises against workloads that rely on high multicore performance because ‘they will be noticeably slower’. It should be noted that the Intel Core Ultra 5 235U with which it is compared has with 10 cores compared to the 6 of the A18 Pro of the Neo, the same chip that powers the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. And that the €699 that the Neo costs are much more pocket-friendly than those around €1,200 for which the Dell model sells.
The Windows laptop performs better on heavy workloads that rely on multiple processor cores, but for many everyday applications good performance per core usually matters more and the Neo has that.
Parallels also notes that 8 GB of RAM is the minimum configuration and that 16 GB is more recommended for running macOS and Windows. In any case, comparing the number of GB does not tell the whole story, since in the case of Apple chips RAM memory is soldered to the processor SoC; They are not independent modules that plug into a socket, as in Windows computers.
This allows higher bandwidth and lower latencyso, for the same amount, they yield more. As he commented Bob Borchersvice president of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple, in 2023 in an interview, ‘8 GB on a MacBook Pro with M3 chip is probably analogous to 16 GB on other systems’.