Exclusive: $599 MacBook Neo easily beats $1,119 Dell laptop on Windows 11 benchmarks - yes, macOS may well be the best platform ever for Microsoft's OS
Despite running a mobile CPU and Windows in a virtual machine, the MacBook laptop excelled in single-core CPU performance
· TechRadarFeatures By Desire Athow published 18 March 2026
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The MacBook Neo, along with the Mac mini, is Apple's most affordable computing option at just $599. And yet it is a formidably capable device, possibly, a once-in-a-generation product. Why? One unknown I wanted to clear up was how well it ran Windows 11 in a virtual machine.
So I asked the team at Parallels to benchmark a Windows-equipped Neo, and what they delivered shocked me.
I didn't have high expectations given the Mac Neo's limited specifications. It uses similar hardware to the iPhone 16 Pro Max: an Apple A18 Pro with six cores, 256GB storage and 8GB of unified memory.
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Against a $1,119 Dell Pro 14 laptop (Intel Core Ultra 5 235U @ 2.00 GHz, 10-core, 16GB RAM, running Windows 11 build 26200 natively), a MacBook Neo with a virtualised Windows 11 (build 26200) with six vCPU and 6GB vRAM (via Parallels Desktop 26) delivered approximately 20% higher single-core CPU performance than natively on the Dell computer.
That's across five industry-leading benchmark packages: Geekbench, PassMark, 3DMark, PCMark, Blender, and Unigine. I reached out to Parallels to obtain the raw data from these tests and will update the article once it is received.
For typical office productivity workloads, overall performance is approximately 20% slower than native Windows 11 on the Dell laptop.
Parallels said this “remains responsive and practical,” meaning it should be fast enough for everyday use. They also added that "this setup works well for standard office productivity (Microsoft Office, email, calendar), web applications and browser-based tools, business productivity software, and light development and testing".
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