used imacs? is this a good deal?

[macgig]

is this mac a good deal for the price? thoughts? I like my current iMac but because of vision issues I need a larger screen... never bought a used mac before but I'm willing to try it and hope that I don't buy someones lemon.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Nope, waste of money. That machine is 10 years old and very much "obsolete" in Apple's eye and should be yours as well.

You don't want to spend ANY money on a Mac that is greater than 2-3 years old. Spending $500 for that machine might seem like a good idea, but if the logicboard fails, it'll cost you easily $800+ to get it fixed. It's a HDD which will fail, so replacing with a SSD will run you another $250-300 for a 1TB drive.

Since screen size is important to you, Apple's Refurb store has this 27" iMac for $1529. Yes it's $1000 more than the eBay model, but this is a 2020 model refurbished by Apple (trust no one else, I don't care what they say). You will get the opportunity to buy 3 years of AppleCare from date of purchase, so you'll be covered until 2025. Being a newer machine, it'll easily last you 10+ years without issues.

Old machine - $500 + $800 (for possible LB failure) + $300 (for SSD upgrade) and you're at $1600.

Oh and I don't trust eBay, so there's that too.

 

[macgig]

good tips thanks.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

is this mac a good deal for the price? thoughts? I like my current imac but because of vision issues I need a larger screen... never bought a used mac before but I'm willing to try it and hope that I don't buy someones lemon.

stay away from the 2011 iMac in that listing personally id avoid it due to ageing GPU's in there and they fail a lot.

now if you want something to run Catalina / Big Sur / Monterey on get a 2013 27" iMac or newer If your budget allows it.

I have 2 2013 machines both same spec CPU GPU RAM NVME HDD and OS

and have no issues in any form.