Generally speaking, anyone who is willing to futz around with their laptop's innards isn't going to mind doing a bit of sleuthing first. For most people though, upgrading the specs means going on the merchant's site and clicking the little option boxes for more performant hardware.

Apple's options for the Neo boil down to either a laughably small amount of storage or (I'm being overly charitable here) an entry-level amount of storage, and... what color you'd like the housing to be.

No, in all likelihood that's the full price. The Dell 15 really isn't a competitor to ultraportable laptops. As I said, they're big, heavy and to borrow a line Apple once said, "unapologetically plastic". They're what you buy when you want your money to turn into hardware specs, not a colorful anodized aluminum housing. Different strokes for different folks.

I was commenting less about the CPU and RAM as potential bottlenecks and more about the limitations of the available storage options. It really doesn't take much 4k footage to blow through 256GB of space.

Obviously, I realize this isn't intended to be a workstation for heavy video editing loads, but the idea that this a feature only "pros" need is kind of silly. A $600 computer in 2026 should be reasonably competent at editing (and having ample space to store) the footage from what now are midrange smartphones.

Certainly, you could shuffle video data around via an external drive, but that's really not ideal.

If we're talking a Windows machine, I'd say hit the deal forums and be patient. This is a shitty economy to pay full price for anything if you're on a tight budget.

If we're talking a Mac, though? The Apple tax is what it is. Do some side hustle like Uber Eats deliveries until you can afford one of Apple's machines that aren't intentionally gimped. I'm mostly joking though - if someone has Apple tastes on an Acer budget, they probably need advice on responsibly managing their money more than they need computer purchasing advice. Apple's $600 laptop should be for wealthy parents buying it impulsively or as a gift for their kids, not something for someone scraping by on ramen noodles for a few weeks because they refuse to use Windows.

My mother saves every video and photo she receives. Apple's belief that only "power users" need lots of space is a bit off the mark. Oh right, they want to sell their monthly cloud subscription. Almost forgot about that.

A lot of the younger generation sees themselves as "influencers" and probably do want video editing capabilities from their laptop. Well, at least until they realize everyone and their brother has the same idea and they're not going to actually make any money doing it.

Journalism is dead, though I can't really fault them too much for not doing an in-depth review of a bargain basement laptop. The factory-installed storage can't be replaced, but there is a NVME socket for a secondary drive. At today's prices though, you could easily install a SSD that is worth more than the entire laptop, which is actually kind of hilarious.

This Dell is $650. It also has 16GB of RAM and a backlit keyboard. Granted, it is one of those beastly huge 15" models, so the lack of a "thinness tax" might be in play here.

This bargain-bin laptop, much to my surprise, not only has a NVME slot but the RAM can be upgraded as well. It's actually fairly common for people who are into this sort of thing to post reviews when they've discovered an el cheapo machine that can be easily souped up a bit.

Granted, performance wise the machine would probably still be a dog even with upgraded RAM, but there are a few legitimate use cases where the upgraded storage of a bigger SSD might come in handy.

I should've said "respective storage options", because Apple's 512GB upgrade comes with a $100 price bump. So, you'd be looking at $699 for laptops with 1TB of storage. With today's jacked up component prices (ostensibly due to AI demand), yeah, it's going to mostly be new old stock that might not be long for this world at those prices. That being said, my criticism is less over sticking to the pricing scheme and more about the fact that Apple won't even give you a 1TB option, even if you're willing to drop another extra $100 on it.

The real pain point of trying to use an iPad as a web browsing device is all the damn ads on the internet, and the fact that Apple has locked the browser down so tight that any sort of adblock implementation is easily defeated by anti-adblock scripts.

Also, after a few years of ownership, they just get dog slow in general. I've got a 5th gen iPad mini that I now only use for replying to texts and checking my Ring cameras. It's completely useless for anything else, since even just navigating around the UI has a ton of lag on the current version of iOS.

The last time I'd impulsively bought a Mac to play around with MacOS, it was when Apple initially introduced the Mac Mini. God was that thing a pile of crap. I'd like to think that I've mostly learned my lesson. I'm good with my Ryzen 5 Lenovo Yoga, thanks (which no, was not an "expensive laptop" - I snagged it as an open box deal from Best Buy back in '23 for $375).

Many entry-level laptops still actually have socketed NVME drives. Yeah, it certainly isn't free, but if you wanted a cheap machine with a ton of storage, that's absolutely doable in the PC realm. But okay, yeah, most people these days aren't going to crack open their brand new laptop and swap the drive. Still, it's rather obvious Apple as intentionally gimped the storage configurations (most machines at this price point offer 512GB / 1TB as the options) and making the RAM not configurable at all was clearly intended to push customers towards Apple's more expensive MacBook product lines.

Apple's real industry "shock" isn't that they released a new laptop with milquetoast hardware specs, it's that it (along with the rest of Apple's major products) can be purchased with 0% financing. They've taken a page right out of the auto industry's playbook - your product offering doesn't have to be anything special if you've got killer financing deals.

With the largest storage option being 512GB, you're not going to be doing much video editing on this laptop even if the CPU is technically up to the task. Therein lies Apple's usual budget device pain point: they won't let you equip it with better storage and RAM specs, because that might cannibalize sales of their higher end machines.

My mother has a Windows laptop that she uses once a year to run TurboTax. Apple's laptop is still overpriced for that use case. Now, this isn't to say Apple doesn't have a place with the aging boomer demographic - my mom is absolutely addicted to her iPad.

*slaps roof of Chevy Bolt*

"This baby can fit so many rolls of paper towel in it!"

If it's not a refund check directly back to the individual American taxpayers, the Trump administration may as well just keep the damn money. It isn't as if any of the businesses who originally paid the tariffs (and then subsequently passed them onto the consumers) are going to suddenly feel generous and drop prices on their goods after getting refunds.