I'm Rosie Garan, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.

Hey, it's Rosie Gareth, and I've got a bonus episode for you today.

My guest is my colleague, Brenda Stolliard.

Brenda is a senior staff writer here at Wirecutter, and her beat is all things, smartphone,

tablets, wearables.

Last week, she covered a product launch event at Apple here in New York, where they revealed,

among other things, a brand new, quote, affordable MacBook, the MacBook Neo, and a new version

of its budget iPhone, the iPhone 17E.

Now, Apple isn't necessarily synonymous with affordability.

So the first and most obvious question for me is, what's the catch?

These new releases could save you hundreds of dollars, but what, if anything, are you sacrificing?

Do they work the same as their standard price counterparts?

What are the tradeoffs?

I'm going to put those questions and more to

Brenda after a quick break. We'll be right back. Brenda, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm glad to be back.

All right, let's jump in.

The new iPhone 17E and the newest budget MacBook, this MacBook Neo, both start at $600.

I want to know, is that what a regular person would consider affordable? Yes and no. I think it depends on the context. So I would say within the

broader range of smartphones and laptops, it's definitely more on the expensive side.

So budget Android phones fall within, I'd say, the $100 to $400-ish range, while budget laptops

costs between $200 and $500. But it's avoidable when we're talking about Apple's ecosystem specifically.

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