Windows Laptops Just Closed a Major Gap With the MacBook Neo
Microsoft's latest Windows update just breathed new life into machines with 8 GB of RAM.
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To say the MacBook Neo disrupted the laptop market would be an understatement. When the Neo dropped, former Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple had its best-ever launch week for first-time Mac customers, and the company is reportedly planning on doubling the MacBook's sales for 2027. It's not hard to see why the MacBook Neo is such a hit: Apple is offering the essential Mac experience at a fantastic price point. You no longer need to spend $1,000 or more for a MacBook, so long as you're okay making some sacrifices to get there—which, it seems, many customers are.
While the MacBook Neo has been a boon for Apple and Apple fans alike, I can only imagine the stress it brought to PC manufacturers—especially those with budget or midrange machines. Windows PCs have long won the price war against Apple. While MacBooks have their passionate customers, buyers looking for the best value have had to weigh expensive Apple laptops against many far cheaper options from companies like Dell, HP, ASUS, and Lenovo. But with the Neo, suddenly a MacBook was competing in this space, and well.
Part of the issue for PC manufacturers was Apple's control over its own ecosystem. Unlike most PC makers, which only produce the hardware for each machine, Apple makes both the hardware and the software for its MacBook lineup. As such, the company has the advantage of optimizing that hardware. It can design macOS to run more efficiently on weaker hardware, in a way that companies like Dell or ASUS can't. You might be comparing the MacBook Neo against a Windows laptop with similar specs, or even better specs, but because Microsoft makes Windows, not the laptop manufacturer, it's possible the Neo ends up with the better overall experience. While that might still be the case, Microsoft may have just closed that gap in a meaningful way.
Microsoft just gave Windows an efficiency advantage
This week, Microsoft announced key upgrades to memory-management efficiency, particularly for machines with 8GB of RAM. This is the amount of memory the MacBook Neo has, as well as many budget and midrange Windows laptops. That's not much memory for 2026, regardless of platform, but Apple seems to have squeezed a lot out of it for the Neo. Now, Microsoft may have just done the same for PCs, as Windows is reportedly 20% more responsive, with 40% faster multitasking.
In its blog post, Microsoft highlighted improvements that users with 8 GB of RAM can expect from Windows going forward. First, Microsoft says it focused on better utilizing the RAM your machine already has. The company compares its memory management to a desk: Anything on the "desk" is stored in RAM; anything in your "drawer" is stored in your drive. As you use your PC, Windows used to move more of your apps and tabs to your drawer to free up more RAM for other things, meaning you'd need to reload those items whenever you returned to them. Going forward, the company says that Windows can keep up to 2GB more of your active data in RAM instead of moving it to slower storage elsewhere. That means apps and tabs should refresh less frequently when you leave and return to them.
Microsoft also says that small actions should be faster across the board. When you open the Start menu, search across your PC, right-click, open Settings, launch the Snipping Tool, and open File Explorer, those actions may be up to 20% faster than they were in January. Microsoft Edge may open up to 33% faster, while Teams can enable Efficiency Mode by default on 8 GB machines, which means it can launch up to 20% faster too. Microsoft put together an interesting stress test to compare multitasking performance between today and January. It opened 20 tabs in Edge, a 4K video, large Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, then Outlook and File Explorer, all without closing any windows. That experience was 40% faster following this latest update.
Microsoft says it also improved the memory efficiency in its apps: The company claims it reduced committed-memory growth by up to 900 MB, and saved up to 360 MB in RAM across Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. That extends to third-party apps as well: Microsoft says that WhatsApp has double-digit memory improvement now. Widgets also only load when you open the app, which saves 200 MB of RAM when the app is closed, while Edge tabs go inactive after 15 minutes instead of two hours.
8 GB PCs are competitive again
Microsoft isn't making these upgrades in a vacuum. Hardware costs, particularly for RAM, have skyrocketed in the age of AI. Microsoft knows that people are likely going to hold onto existing hardware for longer than they usually do, or that they'll opt for less-expensive configurations, including, perhaps, machines with 8 GB of RAM.
PCMag's Chris Hoffman was adamant before this latest Windows update that buyers should steer clear of PCs with 8 GB of RAM. Now, he's pulling back a bit. In his testing, Hoffman noticed improvements when multitasking on an 8 GB PC when compared to similar tests from months ago. He could run multiple Chrome tabs, a Microsoft Word window, and Spotify without bogging down the computer much. Hoffman isn't a lightweight user, so he still wouldn't personally choose an 8 GB machine, but he admits, "If I were an average PC buyer looking for a reasonable desktop experience and could save hundreds of dollars by opting for 8GB of RAM, I might be happy with the performance."
To that point, I think this new Windows update makes 8 GB PCs competitive, especially against the MacBook Neo. We'll still need direct comparisons to know how well this new Windows experience holds up across the board, but these updates are promising. Users with 8 GB machines just got a free, valuable update overnight; new customers can opt for a more affordable PC without feeling like performance will take a nosedive just because they opened one too many Edge tabs.
As Hoffman says, 8 GB of RAM is not ideal for any user looking for serious multitasking or professional workflows, regardless of whether they choose a Mac or PC. But for the average computer customer looking for a solid machine without breaking the bank, I no longer see the Neo as necessarily the default choice. After all, Apple has slowly raised its price, too, from $599 to $699. If you're platform-agnostic, or even prefer Windows to macOS, these updates from Microsoft are quite promising. If you're in the market, check out PCMag's excellent list of budget laptop recommendations.
