Shopping for an inexpensive laptop is like dumpster diving.It’s messy. Most cheap laptops are trash — even models from reputable brands, to say nothing of the no-name notebooks on Amazon. These “craptops” make checking email feel like wading through molasses, and they have atrocious screens, creaky bodies, mushy keyboards, and unreliable trackpads.It’s tedious. You have to wade through hundreds of models and configurations with confusingly similar names to find the few that don’t stink.It requires luck. Prices fluctuate, and models go out of stock or get discontinued. Sometimes we’ll purchase a budget laptop, test it for a few days, and write about it, only to discover that the model is gone before we can recommend it to anyone.But Apple’s MacBook Neo changes all of that. Our laptop experts lived with it for a week, and here’s what we found.The Neo is the best budget laptop. If you need a laptop and have only $600 (or $500 with Apple’s discount for students and educators), the Neo is by far the best option. Not everyone has $1,000 or more to spend on a laptop that feels faster and lasts longer. And while you can get a passable Windows laptop or Chromebook for around $300, those options make serious trade-offs and may disappear entirely with memory and storage shortages.It feels surprisingly good to use. The Neo far surpasses other budget laptops in its display, build quality, and support. Despite the Neo’s phone processor and limited memory, we found that it’s fast enough to use for everyday tasks like checking email, banking, streaming shows, going on video calls, chatting with friends, and even getting in some light gaming.But it has its limits. We don’t recommend the Neo for coding, working in large spreadsheets, or handling more demanding photo and video editing. We’re also concerned about how well its performance will hold up in two to three years — a particular worry, since we expect any laptop to last for at least five.