People usually forget 8GB isn't 8GB. Memory compression means you can store ~2x (lz4) to 3x (zstd) as much data in memory as ordinarily. And in the worst case, reading swap from disk (writes don't matter as they can be predicted) is so much faster with NVMe SSDs.

The worst corner they cut is no keyboard backlighting. That saves them what, $1 BoM per MacBook Neo? Especially because now they have to put up an entire new keyboard production line instead of just piggybacking off of the Air keyboard production line.