Parallels Confirms Apple’s MacBook Neo is Suitable for Virtualizing Windows 11

Apple’s new $599 MacBook Neo, with its A18 Pro chip and just 8GB of RAM, is good enough for running Windows 11 in a virtual machine with Parallels Desktop for Mac. Parallels conducted extensive testing on Apple’s new entry-level MacBook and found that “common Windows apps will feel quick and responsive.”

“Parallels Desktop enables Windows to run on MacBook Neo and best suited for light, occasional Windows use, like a legacy business tool or a Windows-only utility. For CPU- or GPU-intensive Windows applications, we recommend pairing Parallels Desktop with a M-series device,” the company said yesterday.

Windows 11 requires a minimum of 4G of RAM, which means that MacBook Neo users will need to allocate at least half of the device’s unified 8GB of memory to a Windows 11 on ARM VM. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer memory upgrades on the MacBook Neo, but power users aren’t really the target audience for the MacBook Neo.

When Parallels did a performance benchmark with the MacBook Neo and an unspecified Windows laptop, the company’s engineering team saw that the MacBook Neo delivers higher single-core CPU performance, but lower multicore performance compared to the Windows laptop. “The Windows laptop performs better for heavy workloads that rely on multiple processor cores, but for many everyday applications, strong single-core performance often matters more,” the company said.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is currently the only solution officially supported by Microsoft for running Windows 11 on a Mac. With Coherence mode, the virtualization app lets Mac users open Windows applications side-by-side with their macOS apps, and it’s also easy to copy and paste text and drag and drop files between Mac and Windows apps. You can learn more about the latest version of Parallels Desktop here, and the company offers a 14-day free trial.