Hunt or be hunted. Apple Inc. prefers the former and unleashed the MacBook Neo. Powered by the A18 Pro, the Neo isn’t just on the prowl, it’s ready to pounce.

Out of the box, the MacBook Neo looks and feels like the more expensive MacBook Air and MacBook Pro series. The chassis is crafted from durable aluminum to keep it sturdy yet lightweight at only 2.7 pounds. The 13-inch 2408 x 1506 Liquid Retina display is sharp and vibrant despite its lack of P3 Wide color gamut. The trademark Magic Keyboard and Multi-Touch Trackpad are similar to its premium counterparts. In addition, the 3,5mm headphone jack, 1080p FaceTime HD camera, dual mics, dual side-firing speakers complete a suite of MacBook essentials.

The luxury features missing from the entry-level MacBook include MagSafe charging, backlit keyboard, USB4, and the Force Touch trackpad, none of which detract from the overall user experience.

The A18 Pro with 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, 16-core Neural Engine and 60GB/s memory bandwidth combines with 8GB RAM for punchy performance. From multiple apps to Final Cut Pro video editing, to console-level gaming, the A18 Pro can steamroll through all of it without a nearby electrical outlet. Battery life is worse than the Air or Pro, but with up to 16-hour video playback and 11 hours of web browsing, most workloads will do fine with the power-efficient processor.

A only main rival to the MacBook Neo may be Apple’s older MacBook Air or MacBook Pro M1 series, which has fallen below the $500 in recent years. Still, the Neo will have far longer security updates, software support, and newer encoding and decoding engines for video editing.

Windows notebooks have been placed on notice. The MacBook Neo is an industry product that can pummel Chromebooks and plastic laptops into oblivion. From productivity to power, at $599, it’s a predator looking for PC prey.