How the Apple Watch SE fixes the $599 MacBook Neo

How quickly things change. A couple of weeks ago, Apple was that out-of-touch company with the expensive products; now, following the launch of the MacBook Neo and iPhone 17e, it’s the Value Tech Warehouse. Gone are the days of Think Different and insanely great. Welcome to the era of pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap.

Okay, that might not quite be true. It’s extraordinarily unlikely that Apple is pivoting to the budget market in any broad strategic sense, and the company will retain a keen interest in the high-margin premium market. Upsell opportunities will be found wherever possible. But it’s truer today than ever before that you can buy a complete bundle of decent Apple products at a manageable price.

In fact, the entry-level models of the MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and Apple Watch SE 3 come in at a combined $1,447 if you buy direct from Apple, or less if you shop around. While that isn’t exactly an impulse purchase, it’s unprecedentedly affordable. Just make sure you don’t leave off the Apple Watch, which is key to the whole thing.

First of all, the SE 3 is quite simply a brilliant smartwatch at a brilliant price. When we were rounding up Apple’s hits of 2025, I didn’t have any hesitation about the product I wanted to write about. A comfortable and unobtrusive design, always-on display, fast charging, excellent battery life, and on-device Siri… all this for just $249. In my review, I gave it 4.5 stars out of 5 and an Editors’ Choice badge, and I would recommend the device to anyone who’s curious about getting into smartwatches. It’s both good and relatively cheap.

What I didn’t know at the time is how useful the Apple Watch SE would become just a couple of months later. The nice thing about the Apple Watch now is that it covers for one of the $599 MacBook Neo’s few pain points: its lack of Touch ID, which we placed at the top of our list of missing features. Biometric unlocking might seem like a small thing, but it both locks down your Mac and delivers serious convenience when multiplied by the number of times you wake up your Mac or log into a website.

If you’ve had access to it before, managing without it is going to hurt. And if you haven’t, incorporating biometrics is an easy way to level up your day-to-day computing experience.

Let me set the scene. You wake up in the morning and put on your Apple Watch. Do you need to use the passcode to unlock it? No! Just look at your iPhone, and Face ID will unlock both at once. Then you open your MacBook and prepare to begin work. Do you need to enter your password? No! The proximity of an unlocked, authenticated Apple Watch will do that for you. You’ve now got three devices unlocked without having to input a single password, and only one of them needed to have any biometric features.

Multiply this by the number of unlocks per day, the number of days per month, the number of months per year… plus all the times you need to log into a website or want to buy something using Apple Pay (by double clicking your watch’s side button). It adds up.

Now, in strict fairness, I should point out that the 512GB version of the MacBook Neo, which costs an extra $100, does get Touch ID, so the $249 Apple Watch isn’t actually saving you any money. But this isn’t a one-use product. It’s an excellent health and fitness product, a fashion accessory, and a convenient way to get notifications without taking out your phone. Once you start wearing one, you won’t want to take it off.

Most of all, it works as part of a team. Biometrics are only the start: when you own the classic trio of Apple devices—iPhone, Apple Watch, MacBook—then you start to notice all kinds of neat interaction between them. This is what Apple is best at. Well, that and making cheap products, apparently.