Used Macs are getting REALLY cheap (Why I bought one!)

I paid 100 bucks for this box and in it supposedly is a not working retina MacBook Pro it's a 15 inch 2013 base model nothing particularly special but for a hundred dollars depending on how much work has to be done to fix this that could actually be a really good deal grand total 105.36 I don't think we're gonna get a whole lot in this box yeah no charger just a Macbook but that's all we need for 100 bucks I you can't even see me now so I'm very curious about this particular one because it seemed like from the listing the only thing wrong with this is that it didn't have an SSD so I bought a 128 gigabyte SSD for like 12 dollars so theoretically we might be able to fix this for twelve dollars I don't know am I missing something well here we have it it's a pretty normal looking late 2013 MacBook Pro we are missing some case screws I only see two you know what that's fine it makes it easier for me to get inside it you know condition looks okay I can see we have a bit of damage on the clutch cover here nothing really too serious the corners are all pretty good that's a big thing that happens on MacBooks is you know somebody somebody drops it completely caves in a corner so we don't have that at the very least just a touch of delamination beginning right up here by the camera that's a pretty common spot because you know people open it up they hit that with their fingernail and they basically just start peeling the display coating right off let's open it up and see what it's like on the inside but first today's video is sponsored by iolo System Mechanic Ultimate Defense whether you're using a PC or even an Intel Mac with boot camp Ultimate Defense offers Best in Class performance protection and privacy Solutions it's an all-in-one PC cleanup utility that quickly removes those pesky junk files browser caches and registry issues that can slow down Windows additionally live Boost can manage processing power and RAM management to speed up performance while real-time virus and malware protection keeps your computer safe additionally privacy Guardian Works to keep third-party trackers from fingerprinting your system online to keep your browsing Anonymous to learn more use my link in the description below to download Iola today and get 60 off system mechanic Ultimate Defense with 30 days free technical support by using Code Luke miani again big thanks to Iola for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to it gotta get those pentalobe screws not bad at all just a little Dusty you can see we definitely have a base model there's no dedicated graphics but theoretically all I should have to do is stick an SSD in there and that's there we go fixed it who knew for a hundred dollars perfectly working MacBook the retina display what's the catch okay powers on screen's lighting up it's booting I guess there was an operating system on this computer already I don't get this I paid a hundred dollars okay it's running High Sierra for some reason um actually that's the that's an upgraded core i7 look at that 2.3 gigahertz whereas this thing would have had 2.0 let's check the battery health maybe the battery is about to die 447 Cycles normal condition um that was the easiest repair of my entire life and we now have apparently a working MacBook Pro 15 inch retina for 120 bucks that's that's surprisingly good uh I honestly thought that this video was going to be a lot more diagnosing and restoring but I guess at this point we need to talk about how good is a 120 dollar MacBook experience why why pay a grand two grand for a Macbook 120 bucks you got yourself a retina display what more do you need but first let's get this thing cleaned up shall we [Music] so it turns out this MacBook is in really nice shape and it just needed a little bit of a cleaning now there were a couple of stickers on the top case and those came off fairly easily the trick with this big white one here is if you soak it in lens cleaning fluid it softens the adhesive then you can take a guitar pick like the one that comes with the iFixit Pro Tech tool kit and it just cuts it right off you can see how easily it wipes off after just a couple of minutes what was not as easy though was this pesky red barcode sticker which is metallic and just it was a nightmare at first I tried using the guitar pick to get under it and try to peel it up but it was just flaking off in these tiny tiny little chunks and I was barely making any progress So eventually I did find a solution and that was to use this little plastic wheel which is from a kit for removing the adhesive on an iMac display but it turned out it was just small enough to fit under the adhesive and allow me to actually make some progress this whole process was painful it took me nearly 12 minutes to get this sticker off fortunately from here things got a whole lot easier I used some lens cleaner to get the keyboard Palm rest and track pad clean and then I just used a dry towel to wipe the display [Music] then I decided to install Mac OS Big Sur which is the latest officially supported operating system for this machine and with that we're all done [Music] oh foreign so this is insane this thing is completely above what I expected and sure we do have a little bit of delamination on the display which I uncovered after cleaning everything there's a little bit in the center on the top and along the bottom bezel but it doesn't really interfere with how the screen looks yeah it's a little ugly when you focus on it but it doesn't obstruct your view of this gorgeous Retina Display and for a hundred dollars I'm not complaining this thing is 2880 by 1800 all flash architecture it's thin it's light it's got all the ports and this one is in shockingly good condition I'm pretty sure this was used in a case previously because it is completely Factory fresh the hinges are tight there's literally zero scuffs and scratches which is why I think this was in a case and honestly once I got it cleaned up and removed all those stickers I could really see how gorgeous this machine was underneath you you don't see them like this all too often but but they can be found as evidenced here for a hundred dollars and I really do recommend doing what I've done here if you want to buy one of these MacBook Pros buy one without an SSD oftentimes they can get really really cheap as little as a hundred bucks and at that point you can basically choose however much storage you want you can just go on Amazon buy a regular nvme SSD and an adapter I'll link those down below and you can say hey you know what I want two terabytes fine go for it it'll cost more than the entire laptop but you can do that and that's why these things are such a fantastic value proposition and I know there's going to be some PC people watching this going hey you know it's a 10 year old laptop for 100 bucks that's pretty normal but not in the world of apple and you can thank Apple silicon for that well wait what Apple silicon what is what does that have to do with this well if you think about it you can go to any major retailer and buy a new or refurbished MacBook Air with an M1 chip for like 700 dollars and that thing's gonna smoke pretty much every Intel MacBook ever made including like core i9s so yeah it compresses the heck out of the used Market I mean these things would have commanded at least four or five hundred dollars before the M1 chip came out but as soon as that came out and has twice the performance of this people were like oh well I'm just gonna get that I'm not gonna spend 500 on this but that means that you can get it for 120 bucks it's a Retina Display 15-inch MacBook Pro battery is in very good condition screen is bright and there's no like you know bright spots or dead pixels or stage light effects going on there's literally no downside to this at this price point we are now in an era where a 10 year old bargain laptop has a retina display that is frankly very unusual for the longest time when I would make 100 laptop videos we're talking Core 2 Duos with maybe an SSD upgrade that's what we were looking at just a couple years ago but now we have nvme drives that you can upgrade yourself we have Retina displays we're even starting to get Force touch track pads if you buy a 13 inch which you can also get for similar money like these things are a fantastic value I don't even know if this is going to come across in the video it might not seem that weird to you that you can buy a Macbook like this for this amount of money but I'm used to 100 computers barely even being able to play back a YouTube video much less actually be a very capable machine you could use this for Photoshop and graphic design work easily easily you have to keep in mind that in 2013 if you wanted to buy a 10 year old Apple laptop you probably would have been buying one of these I'm talking about a power book G4 titanium but I mean we're talking about quad core Intel chips at the height of their popularity when the these were really powerful chips compared to a single core one gigahertz power PC chip and I don't even think this thing could run Beyond like Lion if that whereas now I've got Big Sur on this thing you can patch it up to venture if you so choose totally usable experience this is a seismic shift in the way that we understand technology to operate and it's one that I think more people are taking advantage of without even knowing it I mean the amount of people that watch my channel that use machines that are more than six years old is is staggering like that is not something that was realistically possible 10 years ago and sure some might look at that as saying oh well technology is stagnating but I look at this as a good thing this makes computers that are really good accessible the fact that you can get a 15 inch retina MacBook Pro for a hundred dollars that makes it open to pretty much anyone so we're now in this exciting period of time where the new stuff is really pushing boundaries with apple silicon and the used stuff is also really really good and affordable that's a win-win in my book thank you guys so much for watching this video like comment subscribe and I will see you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 324,997

Keywords: apple, mac, used apple, used mac, apple deals, mac deals, macOS, Apple, tech, tech deals, used tech, used tech deals

Id: E96LCzkdSOo

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023