Author Topic: Buying a Refurbished Mac?  (Read 4381 times)

Unique User

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Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« on: September 04, 2017, 02:19:26 PM »
Are there any good sites to buy a refurbished Mac?  My teen wants a Mac Air, but I'm unsure where to go in order to get a warranty, quality refurbished product.  Thanks!

Daley

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Unique User

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2017, 03:46:59 PM »
https://www.macofalltrades.com/
https://www.powermax.com/

Thank you IP!  Just what i needed, I could not find any of your recommendations for Mac sites.  But did do a general search and found your recommendation US Micro to replace my ten year old POS laptop that runs Vista.  I've hated it for ten years and figured it was time. 

ministashy

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2017, 11:37:00 AM »
I also recommend going to the Apple store website and looking in their clearance section.  I find refurbished prices are equivalent to third party resellers, and you get the peace of mind knowing that the device in question was looked over by an actual Apple tech and covered by their full warranty.

If you can wait for the new products to come out, you can find last generation (or a couple generation) models there for a pretty decent discount.  That's what I've done for my last few 'pro' computers. 

Unique User

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #4 on: September 07, 2017, 05:13:50 AM »
Thanks for all the advice.  I'll check Apple clearance and refurbished also. 

ketchup

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #5 on: September 07, 2017, 08:46:57 AM »
I also recommend going to the Apple store website and looking in their clearance section.  I find refurbished prices are equivalent to third party resellers, and you get the peace of mind knowing that the device in question was looked over by an actual Apple tech and covered by their full warranty.

If you can wait for the new products to come out, you can find last generation (or a couple generation) models there for a pretty decent discount.  That's what I've done for my last few 'pro' computers.
This is a good strategy.  My GF's last laptop purchase (bought about a year ago) was a Dell from their refurb site on a model that was about to be rotated out.  It was only $1099 when it retailed for $1850 new, and she got the same excellent Dell factory warranty (which includes on-site service; they literally came out to our house and replaced the trackpad when it acted up on day 1).

EarthSurfer

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #6 on: September 07, 2017, 01:59:35 PM »
For the past two years, I have used the site Refurb.me for a bit of comparison shopping. It can give you an idea of the options and prices in the used (and new) market.

https://www.refurb.me/en-us

While my MacBooks (I maintain a separate machine for each major client.) were refurbs from the Apple.com store, I buy mobile devices through third party sources.

Last year Refurb.me alerted me to a close out sale at Game Stop on iPad Air2 refurbs with cellular support. (It was a cost reduction for Mom by going to a cheap cellular data plan and killing standard DSL.)


mistershankly

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2017, 03:39:55 PM »
I've been buying refurb Macs from Apple's own inventory for years, and I highly recommend going that route.  The two links recommended are also very good, but I'd give Apple a shot first since the products are essentially new and the warranty is a full, one-year warranty.  The inventory changes often on their site so buy the item you like when you see it or it may not be available the next day.  Having said that, don't rush the purchase as inventory will come back in stock.  Final word of advice, RAM memory and hard drive capacity are most important when purchasing newer Apple products (and for future-proofing) as they are not upgradeable in the future (like they used to be).  Anything issued after 2014 runs the risk of this, especially the thinner laptops like the Macbook and Macbook Air.  Get the most RAM and hard drive space you can afford at the time of purchase (e.g. at least 8GB RAM and at least 512GB of hard drive storage).  Here's a link to their refurb page...

https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

One more thing... buy an inexpensive 1TB or 2TB portable drive (runs around $100) and keep it as a regular Time Machine backup drive of the laptop (Time Machine backup is automated and included as a part of the Mac OS).  You will not regret it.

EricNYC

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #8 on: November 02, 2019, 10:57:06 AM »
I'd recommend, as long as you can afford it. Depends on how your kid is with technology though; when I was 15 I probably would've abused the hell out of a laptop, simply because I didn't know any better. But on the other hand, my Mac has taken a beating much worse than the $600-1,100 laptops I've had.

Personally I bought a refurb MBP from Apple in April or May of 2013 and it's been working fine for 6 and a half years. It's showing its age, but it's probably still got a year or two left on it. I keep it at home nowadays, and mostly use it for web browsing, entertainment (Minecraft, YouTube, and Netflix) and some work (programming and data science but I use a cloud provider for computing resource intensive work).

It wasn't that significant in savings (maybe $300-400), but IME, Macs age much better than most other laptops I've used. I've dropped mine 3-4 feet a handful of times and it's still going along fine.

jpdx

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Re: Buying a Refurbished Mac?
« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2019, 11:25:38 PM »
I have purchased a few couple Apple computers from resellers on eBay who offer 30-90 day warrantees. MacBook Air is a great little laptop.

 

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