I just ordered a base model Mac Mini a few days ago. The Mac Mini and the MacBook Neo serves different niches. They cost the same for students, teachers, and professors. The MacBook Neo is more portable, but the Mac Mini offers more processing cores and more RAM (16GB instead of 8GB), and it has an M4 processor instead of an A18.

They're both landmark products and local maxima in terms of Mac laptop/desktop capability per dollar.