The Macbook Neo proves Qualcomm made a critical error with its newest Snapdragon chips

Qualcomm has made a critical error with its 2025 and 2026 high-end mobile processors, and it has been highlighted by the arrival of the Apple MacBook Neo.

The relentless push towards faster and faster processors has been exposed as unnecessarily fast-paced, and that snobbish attitudes to devices which don’t have the very top chip inside are misguided.

Here’s why you shouldn’t fall into Qualcomm’s trap this year.

Qualcomm’s range is varied

Very, very varied

Credit: Justin Duino / Android Police

You probably already know the name of Qualcomm’s top mobile chip. It’s the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and it’s an absolute monster.

From its on-paper specs to its real-world ability, the 8 Elite Gen 5 provides power to most of the desirable phones released over the past months, and will do for the rest of 2026 too.

I’m glad it exists, and also look forward to seeing how Qualcomm improves on it in the future.

However, it’s not the only top chip from Qualcomm, and recent experience has shown me the octa-core 8 Elite Gen 5 may be more about marketing and recouping research and development costs than anything else.

Why? Qualcomm makes a 7-core version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and it’s inside the Oppo Find N6.

If I hadn’t been told it was a 7-core version, I’d never have realized.

The Find N6 handled every task with ease, whether it was extensive multitasking or playing games, and even running the RayNeo Air 4 Pro AR glasses.

It beat the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 in benchmark tests too, so it’s still a step forward.

Qualcomm also makes a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, which loses the Elite name, but in all honesty, if it loses power or performance compared to the Elite version, it’s hard to spot.

I spent time with the OnePlus 15R at the beginning of the year, and it was brilliant. My colleague Stephen Radochia felt the same about it too.

Which is the flagship?

All three, or just one?

I think all three of these Qualcomm chips should be considered flagship processors, and treated equally by consumers.

It’s hard to quantify why in just words, so I ran a Geekbench 6 benchmark test to better illustrate the differences between them.

There are marked “improvements” in each case, and generational advances are demonstrated by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s score, taken on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for comparison.

The scores are evidence that the three current, top Qualcomm chips are stellar performers, and any phone with them inside will likely satisfy the vast majority of users, particularly if they’re upgrading from a two-year-old phone.

But take careful note of the 7-core 8 Elite Gen 5’s performance compared to the octa-core version. This gets to the heart of how Qualcomm has complicated its range.

It’s possible the company realized it has priced brands out of the 8 Elite Gen 5, and understood the need to provide other processors with similar performance to help meet their budgets.

It’s also possible the 8 Elite Gen 5’s cooling requirements meant it hasn’t been suitable for all applications, such as inside the Find N6.

The OnePlus 15’s score is almost certainly due to throttling on a phone prone to overheating.

Now, more than ever, it’s not entirely necessary to demand the “top” chip inside your next phone, simply because there are three of them to choose from Qualcomm alone.

Based on the benchmark results, the sweet spot may be the 7-core 8 Elite Gen 5, which has almost all the power without temperatures overwhelming it when the going gets tough.

While this appears to be good for consumers, it’s also terrible, and the critical error on Qualcomm’s part is its overly complicated range, confusing nomenclature, and poor messaging.

It’s not going to change either, as it wants you to only care about its most expensive chip, which likely has the biggest R&D cost to recover.

It puts phone makers in a difficult position, as they risk certain devices being dismissed because the headline chip isn’t Qualcomm’s most hyped-up version.

Using the octa-core 8 Elite Gen 5 may look good on the spec list, but its rumored $240 to $280 base cost (in 2025, so it’s certain to be more in 2026) adds a lot to the final price of the device.

Why does the MacBook Neo matter?

It’s the proof Qualcomm wants to ignore

This neatly brings me on to the MacBook Neo. It’s a laptop powered by the Apple A18 Pro chip, which is an updated version of the mobile processor found not in the latest iPhone 17 Pro series, but the iPhone 16 Pro series from 2024.

The collective gasps and widespread concerns over how this would affect performance is all the evidence we need of how we’ve been conditioned to not only expect the “best” processor, but also how we still think phones are somehow underpowered, or less capable compared to other computing products.

Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police

Since the MacBook Neo has made it into the hands of reviewers and customers, this concern has been revealed as misplaced.

Macworld’s headline for its review states, “I pushed my MacBook Neo to the limit. It didn’t break,” while others sarcastically trumpet its ability by showing how it easily does the things many said wouldn’t be possible.

This is a laptop running an “old” phone processor, with a very reasonable starting price of $600. It should make anyone who has thought twice about a phone because it didn’t have an Elite-spec chip inside see the error of their ways.

Too many cooks making too many chips

One portion is plenty, thanks

Qualcomm painted itself into a corner with the incredibly powerful, boundary-pushing, boiling hot, and very expensive Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. It realized this, so it made not one but two more “8 Gen 5” spec chips to compensate.

No wonder the messaging around it is confused. For example, the only way you’d know a 7-core version existed is if you notice the asterisk on the 8 Elite Gen 5’s spec sheet. If that’s not proof, it’s an afterthought, and not one it wants to promote much, I don’t know what is.

Unfortunately, it perpetuates the assumption that we should only accept the “best” chip in our next phone, and anything else is subpar. The Apple MacBook Neo is our wake-up call.

The performance available in all the current top mobile processors is astonishing, and I’m not saying don’t buy the one you want, just that you should be even more aware of what other chips are capable of this year.

Get to this stage, and you’re well on the way to picking up a better value phone, safe in the knowledge it won’t make a dramatic difference to performance.