5 games that run smoothest on MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo can run many games, but only these five titles offer the smoothest experience with the A18 Pro chip and 8 GB RAM.

The new MacBook Neo can technically run many games, but not all of them offer a good experience. A good experience here is understood as a frame rate approaching 60 FPS or a smooth frame time graph. While Apple’s Game Conversion Toolkit is a positive step toward promoting native support, most games still require conversion layers like Rosetta 2 to run Windows games through software like CrossOver, which affects performance. Furthermore, the MacBook Neo is equipped with a portable A18 Pro chip and, due to the lack of a cooling fan, is prone to overheating when handling heavy workloads, causing lag and sporadic images while gaming.

With the above limitations, the five titles below run best on Apple Silicon, especially MacBook Neo, even with 8 GB unified memory. However, if experiencing performance issues, players can tweak the default settings to achieve a better gaming experience.

1. Resident Evil Village

The ideal way to play Resident Evil Village on MacBook Neo is to take advantage of MetalFX resolution upscaling technology. With this technology, the 8 GB memory limit can be overcome because the game is rendered at a lower resolution. In terms of frame rate, players can experience a fairly stable 60 FPS at 1080p resolution with the Performance preset. However, care should be taken when playing for long periods of time as overheating can cause a drop in performance.

2. No Man’s Sky

If you want to experience open world games, No Man’s Sky is an excellent choice. The developer’s optimization is impressive as the game supports the native Metal 3 API.

The frame rate remains smooth and steady around 60 FPS at default medium settings. However, players will experience minor, temporary lag when first initializing and loading densely populated planets.

3. Hades 2

Hades 2 is one of the best roguelike action hack and slash games to play on the MacBook Neo. You can even play without a charger because the configuration requirements are very light and always run at a fixed 60 FPS with an extremely stable frame time chart.

Whether there are many NPCs on screen, boss battles, or heavy particle effects, the frame rate still does not fluctuate significantly.

4. Slay the Spire 2

For those who love 2D games, Slay the Spire 2 on MacBook Neo is a great choice. Games run extremely smoothly and consume very little power from the A18 Pro chip. The experience is absolutely smooth at native resolution, and the 8GB of unified memory is more than enough to handle games while keeping the browser or background apps open.

5. Hollow Knight: Silksong

Hollow Knight: Silksong is another 2D game that runs perfectly on the MacBook Neo’s iPhone chip. The game maintains an absolutely stable frame timing chart. Boss battles, NPCs, and skill combos are all seamless thanks to minimal input lag. Players can also play unplugged for hours and keep tutorials open in the background if they get stuck on any level.

Overall, the MacBook Neo is an excellent laptop with a price of 15,200,000 VND. Along with these titles, there are other options like Lies of P, Control, Batman: Arkham series and many more. However, the gaming experience on those titles may be limited. The base 8 GB unified memory leaves very little space to spare for in-game assets, and not all titles run natively.

Software conversion and compositing layers cause inevitable performance drops on the A18 Pro chip. Still, as long as you manage expectations properly and choose titles that don’t cause the MacBook Neo to throttle due to heat or run out of memory, or struggle to hit 30 FPS even with resolution upgrades and the lowest settings, Apple’s budget laptop can establish itself as a surprising portable gaming device.