Apple's introduction of the MacBook Neo - especially its amazing price/performance ratio - has made a significant impact in the Windows world.

Intel responded with a new CPU aimed at similarly priced laptops. Initial benchmark results show that this chip is 21% faster than the A18 Pro used in the MacBook Neo...

The price of the MacBook Neo was a surprise both within and outside the Apple ecosystem. Even Windows fans were astonished by the value it offers.

I can't believe it: Apple's $599 MacBook Neo has ignited a huge fire in the Windows laptop market — Microsoft needs to panic […] This new low-cost macOS laptop offers everything an average user will need in 2026.

In the world of Windows laptops, nothing came close to the combination of Neo's hardware quality, performance, battery life, and price.

One reason for this was the lack of a suitable chip to run the Windows equivalent of the Neo. It has been reported that Intel is addressing this situation with the introduction of the new Wildcat Lake Core 300 chip.

Tweaktown reports that this chip matches the single-threaded performance of the A18 Pro and is 21% faster in multi-core benchmarks.

On PassMark, the new Wildcat Lake chip scored 15222 in multi-threaded performance and 4047 in single-threaded performance. To better understand this, it should be noted that the single-threaded score is not particularly impressive, as the CPU can only boost up to 4.6 GHz on its P-cores. However, the multi-core result is impressive, as it outperforms the Apple A18 Pro by 21%. This is the chip used in the new Apple MacBook Neo! The single-threaded result for the A18 Pro is 4066, which is almost identical to the Wildcat Lake Core 5 320.

Of course, as Roman Loyola from Macworld pointed out, competing with the Neo is not just about matching or exceeding the chip's performance. Setting aside macOS and Windows, it remains to be seen whether the chip can match the A18 Pro in terms of battery life and whether Windows PC brands can approach the build quality of the MacBook Neo in this price range.

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