A $600 low-cost MacBook may launch this year, with Apple taking aim at Chromebook users seeking an affordable laptop for work or school.
DigiTimes, a Taiwanese trade publication, reported today that at least some components for the rumored machine are expected to enter mass production in the third quarter of 2025, meaning the laptop could go on sale before year’s end.
Citing unnamed sources within Apple’s supply chain, the report alleges that a low-cost MacBook would be priced between $600 and $700.
$600 low-cost MacBook could launch in late 2025
We first heard about a low-cost MacBook at the end of June, when revered Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple was developing a low-cost MacBook that would have a screen measuring approximately 12.9 inches diagonally, slightly smaller than the MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch screen, and be powered by an Apple A18 Pro chip.
It was a surprising rumor because the A18 Pro powers the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max smartphones. An iPhone-class chip would help lower production costs, as these chips typically have fewer CPU and GPU cores than their Mac counterparts.
But if you take a look at the sythetic CPU and GPU benchmarks, the rumor suddenly makes a lot of sense. In single-core tasks, the A18 Pro is about 46 percent faster than the M1 chip that powered the first generation of Apple silicon laptops. It performs almost on par with the M1 in multi-core and graphics tasks.
Why a MacBook with an iPhone-class chip makes sense
As Jason Snell wrote at Six Colors after Kuo released his report:
If you wanted to get rid of the M1 MacBook Air but have decided that even today, its performance characteristics make it perfectly suitable as a low-cost Mac laptop, building a new model on the A18 Pro would not be a bad move. It wouldn’t have Thunderbolt, only USB-C, but that’s not a dealbreaker on a cheap laptop. It might re-use parts from the M1 Air, including the display.
The reason such a machine would be only capable of USB-C and not Thunderbolt is that the A18 Pro only supports USB 3 at 10 Gb/s, not Thunderbolt. But that doesn’t matter because people in the market for a low-cost MacBook couldn’t care less about Thunderbolt.
Right now, Apple’s most affordable brand-new laptop is the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M4 chip, starting at $999 in the United States. However, the company also partnered with Walmart to offer the classic wedge-shaped M1-powered MacBook Air, released in 2020, for just $649.
That machine is over four years old now and Walmart only offers a single configuration with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of flash storage and a choice between three colors (gold, silver and space gray). Nevertheless, it proves that Apple clearly wants to offer a laptop at a low-enough price to compete with Chromebooks.
Going after Chromebooks
At $600, a low-bcost MacBook would probably steal some sales from the $999 MacBook Air. It would also compete with the M4 Mac mini, which starts at $600.
But I don’t think Apple would mind it as such a machine would go after Chromebook users seeking an affordable laptop for work or school. Kuo predicted Apple could sell between five and seven million units of a low-cost MacBook in 2026. The analyst said Apple would offer it in silver, blue, pink and yellow.