Everything Apple announced this week: Mac Book Neo, i Phone 17e and more

Overview

Everything Apple announced this week: Mac Book Neo, i Phone 17e and more

The company also revealed an M4 i Pad Air, M5 Pro- and Max-powered Mac Book Pro models and a Studio Display XDR.

Details

Apple had promised a “big week” for the company as rumors swirled that it had a number of product announcements lined up. True enough, it unveiled a half-dozen new and refreshed devices over the last few days, along with more powerful chips for Mac Book Pros.

The news started on Monday with the announcements of the i Phone 17e and M4-powered i Pad Air. The company followed up on Tuesday with the reveal of the M5 Mac Book Air, the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Mac Book Pro models that use said chips, a refreshed Studio Display and a brand-new 27-inch Studio Display XDR.

In addition, ahead of the official announcement, Apple leaked news of a cheaper Mac Book called the Mac Book Neo. Whoops! The company confirmed the existence of that system on Wednesday. It starts at $599, making it Apple’s most affordable laptop to date.

Here’s our recap of everything Apple announced this week:

Apple has spruced up this year’s entry-level i Phone with some pretty solid upgrades, though it's keeping the starting price at $599. The i Phone 17e has double the base storage of the i Phone 16e at 256GB. It also has Mag Safe support with Qi 2 wireless charging speeds of up to 15W, double that of the i Phone 16e.

Design-wise, Apple hasn't exactly rocked the boat. The i Phone 17e looks pretty much identical to its predecessor. It appears that Apple is sticking with the same 48MP Fusion camera system as it used in the i Phone 16e too.

That said, the 6.1-inch Super Retina display has Ceramic Shield 2. According to Apple, this provides “3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation and reduced glare.” The company slotted its C1X cellular modem into the i Phone 17e as well. It says this is up to two times faster than the C1 that was in the i Phone 16e. The device has the same A19 chip as the i Phone 17, so it supports Apple Intelligence AI tools, and it runs i OS 26.

In addition, the i Phone 17e has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, as well as the promise of "all-day battery life." It also supports satellite-powered features including Emergency SOS, Roadside Assistance, Messages and Find My.

Pre-orders for the i Phone 17e are now open. It’s available in black, white and soft pink. The device will hit shelves in more than 70 countries and regions on March 11.

The latest i Pad Air boasts Apple’s M4 chip. That means the mid-range i Pad is effectively remaining a year behind the i Pad Pro. The M4 is almost two years old at this point, while the top-end model has the newer M5 chip. Still, if you only use an i Pad for casual tasks like watching shows, web browsing, email and so on, the M4 will be more than powerful enough. It will be more adept at handling resource-intensive tasks like video editing than previous i Pad Air models too.

Apple has also bumped up the RAM from 8GB from the last-gen model to 12GB. Given the sharp increase in RAM prices in recent months, it’s slightly surprising that Apple is sticking to the same prices for the i Pad Air. The 11-inch M4 i Pad Air starts at

599 while the 13-inch version starts at

799, each with 128GB of storage. There's a $50 discount for those buying it for educational use.

Apple claims the M4 delivers up to 2.3 times faster performance compared with the M1 i Pad Air and "over 4x faster 3D pro rendering with ray tracing performance." Of course, the new i Pad Air runs i Pad OS 26.

Apple gave the i Pad Air other internal upgrades by including its N1 and C1X connectivity chips. As such, this is the first i Pad Air with Wi-Fi 7 support. As you might expect, 5G cellular connectivity is available as well.

The design of the M4 i Pad Air doesn't seem to have changed, as it appears to have the same LCD display Apple used in the last two iterations of the tablet. The company has stuck with the same rear-facing camera and dual-speaker setup as well.

Pre-orders for the M4 i Pad Air are now open. The tablet will hit retailers in 35 countries and regions on March 11. It will be available in blue, purple, starlight and space gray.

Apple’s most powerful laptop line finally got the chip upgrades that we’d long been expecting. Along with announcing the M5 Pro and M5 Max, the company is offering versions of the Mac Book Pro with those chipsets. However, there are price increases to go along with the upgrades.

The new 14-inch Mac Book Pro with an M5 Pro chipset (with 15 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores), 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage starts at

2,199. That's a

200 increase compared with the base M4 Pro-powered system from late 2024, though Apple has doubled the base storage, which is a welcome touch. If you prefer, you can have a 14-inch MBP with a more powerful M5 Pro (with up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores) or M5 Max (with 18 CPU cores and 32 or 40 GPU cores). You can double the RAM to 48GB as well.

The 16-inch Mac Book Pro has an M5 Pro chipset with 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores as standard. Of course, you can swap that out for an M5 Max if you'd rather. The 16-inch model starts at

2,699, a

200 increase from the base M4-powered system. It also starts with 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. For what it’s worth, Apple says both the memory and SSD are faster than in previous models.

Apple hasn’t changed the Liquid Retina XDR display and 12MP Center Stage front-facing camera for these models. However, the company has installed its N1 chip to power Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity.

Apple said the M5 Pro and M5 Max are built using new “Fusion Architecture” that “combines two dies into a single system on a chip (So C).” As ever, the goal is to deliver more power and efficiency. We’ll find out for ourselves whether Apple’s performance claims hold up when we’re able to test the chips.

Meanwhile, the base 14-inch Mac Book Pro with an M5 chipset also got a

100 price increase to

1,699. To take the sting out of that a bit, Apple doubled the base storage of that model to 1TB as well. Given that Apple usually charges a premium for storage increases, that’s not a terrible tradeoff.

A year after Apple upgraded the Mac Book Air with an M4 chipset, the company pulled the same trick by swapping in an M5 chip. The company also boosted the base storage from 256GB to 512GB, with an SSD that it claimed can provide “2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation.”

While the MBA still has 16GB or RAM as standard, Apple also upgraded the memory to have 153GB/s of bandwidth — the company said that’s a 28 percent improvement over what the M4 MBA offered. Meanwhile, Apple has slapped in the N1 chip to deliver Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity.

Alas, with those upgrades comes a tradeoff. Apple has bumped the starting price of the latest Mac Book Air back up to

1,099 after cutting it to

999 for the M4 model. That’s for the 13-inch variant. The 15-inch M5 Mac Book Air starts at $1,299.

The latest Mac Book Air is available in sky blue, midnight, starlight and silver. You can pre-order one now. It will hit stores in 33 countries and regions on March 11.

Apple expanded its laptop lineup even further on Wednesday with the announcement of the Mac Book Neo. This is a new entry-level model that starts well below the latest

1,099 Mac Book Air at a very reasonable

599 ($499 for educational use). It’s Apple’s least expensive laptop to date, and a clear attempt by the company to wade into a market that’s saturated with cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks.

As expected, the laptop runs on an A18 Pro chip, which first appeared in the i Phone 16 Pro and i Phone 16 Pro Max. The chipset has a 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine, along with 8GB of unified memory. That’s enough for the Mac Book Neo to power Apple Intelligence features (of course, it’s a mac OS Tahoe machine). Apple also said that the Mac Book Neo will run for up to 16 hours on a single charge.

The Mac Book Neo has a 13-inch Liquid Retina Display (with 500 nits of brightness and support for 1 billion colors), one USB-C 3 port, a USB-C 2 port and a headphone jack, but no Mag Safe connector. There’s a 1080p front-facing Face Time HD camera, dual mics and side-firing speakers that support Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos.

The system has a Magic Keyboard with a multi-touch trackpad. However, if you want a Touch ID sensor, you’ll need to pay $100 more for it. Ponying up the extra cash will also double the storage from 256GB to 512GB.

Apple claimed that the Mac Book Neo is up to 50 percent faster at everyday tasks than “the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5” with 8GB or RAM and a 256GB SSD. The company also contended that its new laptop is up to three times faster than that Windows system “when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos.”

The Mac Book Neo is available in four colors: silver, blush (a light pink), citrus (light yellow) and indigo. It was previously reported that Apple would offer the budget-friendly laptop in some lively i Mac-esque colorways. Moreover, Apple says the laptop is “made with a durable recycled aluminum enclosure that helps it reach 60 percent recycled content by weight,” which is said to be the most of any Apple device.

As with the rest of the new devices, pre-orders are open now and the Mac Book Neo will be available in stores in 30 countries and regions on March 11.

We’ve already had a chance to go hands-on with the Mac Book Neo. Engadget senior editor Devindra Hardawar had generally positive first impressions of the laptop, but felt that the keyboard and touchpad didn’t feel quite as sturdy as those on Apple’s higher-end systems.

I don’t think many people had Studio Displays on their Apple announcements bingo card for this week, but here they are. The Studio Display XDR is completely new.

This is a 27-inch monitor with a 5K Retina XDR screen. It has a mini-LED display with more than 2,000 dimming zones and peak HDR brightness of 2,000 nuts, along with a wider color gamut. The Studio Display XDR boasts a 120 Hz refresh rate (an improvement over the 60 Hz that previous models were limited to) and a tilt- and height-adjustable stand as standard.

The monitor also has a 12MP Center Stage camera with support for Desk View, a feature that — weirdly enough — lets you show both your face and what's on your desk. Thunderbolt 5 connectivity allows you to hook up more displays by daisy chaining them. The Studio Display XDR is also a Thunderbolt hub with support for up to 140W of charging power. As such, you'll be able to fast charge a 16-inch Mac Book Pro using the included Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable.

The Studio Display XDR starts at

3,299. A version with nano-texture glass, which is said to further reduce reflectivity, costs

3,599.

Meanwhile, the refreshed Studio Display has an upgraded 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View. There's also a "studio-quality" three-microphone array and six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio. The latest model has Thunderbolt 5 support with the option to daisy-chain displays. The Studio Display can deliver 96W charging as well.

The base monitor is

1,599. It still has a 27-inch 5K Retina display with up to 600 nits of brightness and P3 wide color. It comes with standard glass or, for an extra

300, nano-texture glass. The Studio Display has a tilt-adjustable stand as standard. If you'd prefer to have one that's height adjustable as well, you'll need to shell out another $400.

Again, pre-orders for the displays are now open ahead of broader availability on March 11.

Key Takeaways

Everything Apple announced this week: Mac Book Neo, i Phone 17e and more
The company also revealed an M4 i Pad Air, M5 Pro- and Max-powered Mac Book Pro models and a Studio Display XDR
Apple had promised a “big week” for the company as rumors swirled that it had a number of product announcements lined up
The news started on Monday with the announcements of the i Phone 17e and M4-powered i Pad Air
In addition, ahead of the official announcement, Apple leaked news of a cheaper Mac Book called the Mac Book Neo