Windows Central Insider
Apple's MacBook Neo may have some new competition, and I'm not talking about Windows laptops that have been discounted. New PCs from Honor, ASUS, and HP have been spotted at Chinese retailers. All three of the laptops are powered by the Intel Core 5 320 processor.
VideoCardz highlighted the three new laptops. Since the PCs appear on a retail site based in China, their prices are in RMB. A rough conversion to USD places them all in a similar price range to the MacBook Neo.
Laptop | RMB Price | USD (with 13% tax) | USD (without tax) |
|---|---|---|---|
Honor Notebook X14 2026 | 4399 RMB | ~$646 | ~$571 |
ASUS Fearless 14SE 2026 | 4599 RMB | ~$675 | ~$597 |
HP OmniBook 3 | 5099 RMB | ~$748 | ~$662 |
The Intel Core 5 320 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor. It has two performance cores and four low power efficient cores, according to Intel.
Benchmarks of the Intel Core 5 320 stack up favorably against Apple's A18 Pro, which powers the MacBook Neo. Figures from PassMark show a single-core score of 4,047 and a multi-core score of 15,222 for Intel's new chip. The A18 Pro scored 4,066 single-core and 11,993 multi-core.
The Intel Core 5 320 is an Intel Wildcat Lake CPU made for affordable laptops.
The new laptops are listed in China, but we should see other PCs powered by Intel Wildcat Lake chips in other markets soon.
Windows 11 vs macOS
The price of the MacBook Neo is the main way the laptop disrupted the market. Before the introduction of the MacBook Neo, people would have to purchase a used MacBook to dip into the sub-$600 price range. I could argue that even in 2026 a MacBook with an M1 processor is a better choice than the MacBook Neo, but that's not really the point. Many people want to purchase new devices rather than rely on the second-hand market.
Windows has dominated in the budget-friendly space for years. The financial reality is that for many, a MacBook was not even an option worth looking at for the longest time. The MacBook Neo changed that, and pitted Windows 11 against macOS in a new price band.
The trendy opinion is to assume that this means the MacBook Neo will dominate Windows laptops in the same price range. Many reviewers, bloggers, and social media users would have you believe the only thing preventing macOS from being king across the board was the lack of a budget option. I'm not sure that's the case.
I'm sure some people will pick the MacBook Neo as their first device. College campuses will have plenty of the colorful laptops come fall. But Windows has been around for a long time and has billions of users for a reason.
Even the reaction of the Windows Central team to the MacBook Neo was split. Our Senior Editor Zac Bowden argued that Microsoft should panic. Our Senior Editor Ben Wilson lost interest in the MacBook Neo after seeing its specs.
I argued that Microsoft abandoned the true budget market and left the door open for the MacBook Neo. But that was about Microsoft-made hardware, not Windows laptops overall. The new laptops from Honor, ASUS, and HP show that other OEMs can step up and fill the void on the Windows side of things.
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