Remember those ‘I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC’ ad spots from years ago? Such platform rivalry feels like old, mouldering hat these days (especially to a console-gaming interloper like me). That said, we live in a world where both the MacBook Neo and the Dell XPS 13, two notebooks alike in dignity, are vying for the crown of ‘most affordable entry-level notebook’ at $699 a piece.
The rivalry is old news, though a fresh twist in the tale is that apparently large Microsoft Word files actually open faster on the MacBook Neo. Independent testing carried out by PhoneBuff found that the Neo opened a 500-page Word document in a hair over 7 seconds, whereas a similarly specced Dell XPS 13 took 12 seconds (via Windows Latest).
It’s quite the upset—you’d think that after all these years, Microsoft would offer the optimum Word Doc experience within Windows. To add insult to injury, the MacBook Neo doesn’t even have Apple’s speedy M-series silicon, but instead features what is essentially a repurposed phone chip in the A18 Pro. Though, to be fair, this ‘mere’ phone chip is still comparable to older M-series chips.
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Notebooks like this can handle more than just note-taking. The Dell XPS 13 features an Intel Core 5 320 (a stripped-down version of the Panther Lake chips we like a lot), which should offer plenty of other opportunities to shine throughout PhoneBuff’s testing. For instance, on startup the Dell XPS 13 races to the desktop in 24 seconds. The MacBook Neo takes very nearly twice as long, clocking in at 40 seconds. Mind you, that may not really be an, ahem, apples to apples comparsion as the notebooks are running two different operating systems.
But as both of the laptops tested were configured with only 8 GB of RAM, you’d perhaps expect this to be a closer run thing. PhoneBuff’s battery efficiency and creative workload tests are a lot more variable, but there’s only one thing that I’m interested in here: gaming performance.
Cyberpunk 2077 on a notebook? It’s more likely than you think—though with some caveats, obviously. The MacBook Neo loaded up CD Projekt Red’s techno dystopia in a hair under 41 seconds, whereas the Dell XPS 13 managed it in 55. When it comes to the game benchmark, though, you can’t even attempt to run it at ultra settings on the Dell XPS 13.
Otherwise, when running fullscreen, the XPS 13 averages 16 fps in the benchmark, whereas the MacBook Neo averages almost 20 fps. Now, the MacBook Neo outperforming the Dell was not something I was expecting. Though I also wouldn’t necessarily call 20 fps ‘playable,’ let alone ‘enjoyable’.
Our Ian managed to get the MacBook Neo to run Cyberpunk 2077 at 30 FPS in his own testing earlier this year. He writes in his review, “The downside is that to get this, you need to dip below Steam Deck settings, using the Low graphics profile, with the resolution at 720p, and with MetalFX upscaling in performance mode. That’s not great, and looks a little soft thanks to all the upscaling going on, but at least it is technically playable.”
Personally, I think I’ll be sticking with my rig for Cyberpunk 2077—though either notebook might still get a look in for less hardware-intensive indie releases and visual novels.
If you manage your gaming expectations accordingly, then the XPS 13’s 13-inch OLED touch display is nothing to sneeze at. The XPS 13’s OLED also enjoys P3 colour gamut, meaning it supports a slightly wider range of colours than the MacBook Neo. Furthermore, its 120 Hz refresh rate is twice that of the MacBook Neo’s screen—at the very least, scrolling through a webpage will feel a smidge smoother on the Dell, even if its Intel Core 5 320 chip will struggle to keep up with your competitive favourites.
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