As a student, which one should you get? The new MacBook Neo or the MacBook Air M5?

As a student, which one should you get? The new MacBook Neo or the MacBook Air M5? The MacBook Neo starts at $500 US with education pricing while the MacBook Air starts at $1,000 with education pricing. At those base prices, the Neo comes with the A18 Pro chip paired with 256 gigabytes of storage and 8 gigabytes of RAM, while the Air comes with Apple's M5 chip paired with 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM. So compared to the Neo, the Air actually has twice the RAM and twice the storage and basically twice the performance for also twice the price. But the thing everyone is realizing now that reviews of the MacBook Neo are starting to come out is that the iPhone chip in the MacBook Neo, which used to be in the iPhone 16 Pro, feels just as powerful as the M5 chip when it comes to general everyday productivity tasks. Swiping around the UI on this and doing everyday tasks feels exactly the same between this and this, despite the $500 price difference. So as a student, if all you're doing is primarily online work and the most intensive thing you're going to be doing on your MacBook is creating a PowerPoint or making a diagram in some kind of third-party app, the MacBook Neo is completely fine, even despite the fact that it only has 8 gigabytes of RAM because you're never going to feel the limitation. And if you're doing nothing more than that apart from maybe watching some movies and TV shows, the MacBook Neo is the one you should get and save the money instead of getting the MacBook Air M5. Now for the price point, the Neo definitely does have a couple of compromises which I'm going to mention, but they should not deter you from getting the Neo if all you're doing is basic tasks. The biggest compromise in my opinion is the fact that the keyboard is not backlit, so in the dark, it might be slightly harder to see the keys compared to the backlit keyboard on the MacBook Air. And there are only two USB-C ports and a headphone jack with no MagSafe. The one here is USB-3 which is the fast one while this one is USB-2, but both can be used for charging. If you're rarely going to plug anything into the MacBook Neo except for a charger, this is not a limitation you're going to feel at all. And now let's talk about the MacBook Air M5 because if you're doing literally anything else that requires even slightly more power, you're going to be thanking yourself for getting the MacBook Air instead of the Neo. Not that the Neo isn't powerful enough, but for anything requiring more power like photo editing, video editing, graphic design, 3D rendering, music production, basically anything beyond the basic tasks, the Air is just going to be so much better. The M5 chip has a faster CPU and GPU and it has double the storage and double the RAM as standard which you're going to need if you're actually going to be pushing this thing. And the storage is also much faster in this compared to the Neo, which again in this you won't notice for basic tasks, but you definitely will when it comes to pushing the machine to its limits. And if you decide to go for the Air, you get a few creature comforts as well like a better webcam, better microphone, better speakers. You also get MagSafe along with two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports which are incredibly powerful and can basically run anything just off the ports themselves. And the Air also has Touch ID built into the power button as standard which is missing on the base model of the MacBook Neo unless you pay $100 more for the 512 gig version of the Neo, which I don't personally think is worth it for most people. The display on the MacBook Air is ever so slightly bigger, has True Tone and also has more accurate colors which is important for creative workflows. And that should cover everything, so if you have any questions, let me know.