Maybe not as cheap as yours, but I also managed to find a good deal on a broken MacBook Air M1 here in Mexico. Bought the laptop with a faulty keyboard and trackpad for around $270 USD. Replacing the top case costed me around $110 USD. A bit more than yours in total, but prices are way higher here than in the US, and getting a fully functioning M1 MacBook Air for $380 is fantastic no matter where you are. Fixing broken devices rocks.
Love it! Great job doing it yourself -- it's even harder to find Apple Stores outside of the US. To the executives at Apple responsible for serializing components and subjugating user-repair behind anticompetitive software locks: a big middle finger. The environmental focus at the last Apple event was corporate greenwashing at its ugliest 🙄
the only problem is that the replacement display you got seems pretty substandard. As soon as you booted the machine up, the display looked really green and weird. Maybe you could calibrate it to make it look better, but it certainly isn't the best example of an aftermarket display, could've done better with that one! Still a banger deal tho :D + I’ve seen a lot of comments about the lack of True Tone causing this issue. That’s certainly not it. I’ve replaced many Apple displays with OEM panels (official Apple panels with only the broken front glass replaced), and the display looks virtually identical as the original, only with a tiny bit of blue tint caused by the lack of True Tone. But the difference shouldn’t jump off the screen, since the white balance should look similar to older Macs without True Tone. And the lack of True Tone shouldn’t make a display super green either, True Tone usually turns the display either warm or bluish depending on the lighting around you.
I agree. For day-to-day use, probably not a huge issue. If I was going to do anything that needs proper color, I would lose my mind. Why not just use the warranty and pay for the replacement display via Apple?
I know why this Mac has a cracked screen, it looks like the previews owner tried to cover the camera with a piece of tape or something, as you can see the damage started around the camera.
That is a possibility. My daughter placed a security camera slide cover on hers and that how her M1 Air screen cracked. But that would have limited the damage to underneath the camera. In this situation I would suggest that maybe they closed the Air with a cable sandwiched in between the screen and the keyboard. That would account for the damage going wider across the top of the screen.
@@SonnyHungactually since the camera and the screen are so close together, and the display being so thin, pressure on the camera can actually crack the LCD.
Good that you mentioned the apple repair programme and the screen pairing. They really should give us access to the calibration tool or whatever it is to enable true tone for the screen.
The flip side of that is all/most of the cheap screens for sale are from iCloud locked (possibly stolen) devices. To do the True Tone calibration (if they gave up on iCloud locking) would be a color meter and possibly something that can emit a solid known reference color (like a iPhone screen you hold over the sensor).
@@nadiro For laptops yes but for phone parts the math is different, prior to the intriuciton of iCloud locker there were large gangs expliclty targeting the theft of phones as the main income source for the gang. This stoped very fast as soon as the value of stolen phones dropped, just locking the SOC is not enough as the display is a large part in the devices cost. I think apple should only provide profiles for devices that are not iCloud locked but they should activity market this so that recyclers know how much more valuable a device that is unlock is and push pressure ($) on schools etc to bother to do this or to sign the needed paperwork that would let the recycler do it.
I bought an M1 Air last week for 350$ from the Facebook marketplace. It had two dead pixels and some scratches. Later found the previous owner had Apple Care+ but was completely oblivious to that. I cashed in that. Now I've got a perfectly working Macbook M1 Air and I'm commenting here using that. Not only the dead pixels were gone but also all the scratches are taken care of !!! Sweet deal for me !!!!
Nice job! I found the same model macbook air 2 years ago at a local rural pawn shop for $350. The unit did not boot up but it did power on to the "new" recovery menu that had me realizing this was of the m1 series. The tag just said "macbook." They promised money back if it is icloud locked. I offered $280 and they took it. It had 20 battery cycles or so. I've still got truetone. This computer replaced my i7 2018 macbook pro 13" before it. This m1 base model has been the best laptop I've ever had and I've had a lot of laptops of various makes and models. I love this computer.
Became a subscriber of yours Luke in 2019, purely because of your awesome Mac repair videos. My body starts to tingle whenever I see a new one of these appear. Great result and wonderful work!
yeah its insane apple does it with everything now, like you replace your screen on a iphone and it will disable your face id and selfie camera aswell as the true tone
@@Sloppyjoe96I believe only changing the front cameras causes Face ID to stop working and I believe they fixed the cameras not working but replacing the screen without transferring the serial number from the old one to the new screen will cause True Tone to not work.
@@IMDYT420 I wonder if it is possible to transfer the serial number from the old macbook display to the new one like on iphones to restore the true tone feature :D
Nice spot dude... been scanning your channel for a while, I refurbished every single Mac desktop and laptop that existed from 1998 to 2015 when the ****s locked everything down. Selling on ebay since 2005 to 2013, then Amazon till 2018 when they (Apple) restricted second hand resellers... love your channel dude, the pushing of the limits in mods and right to repair.. keep on keeping on my man! Much love
I am not defending Apple, but isn't this "iCloud lock" such a pain in the a** on these because the person who put it to recycling, did not recycle it and the seller who could be the recycler or someone who bought the laptops from the recycler is not disclosing it when he is selling it to you?
This was pretty much what happened with my M1 11-inch iPad Pro where only the display was cracked and wasn't iCloud locked. I won it at an Ebay auction for the same price as a 9th gen iPad today. +$70 for a glass replacement.
unfortunately you can tell the difference in the display colour even on video, if I would use this macbook it would be really difficult to ignore, I made mistake once by replacing an Iphone 12 screen with an after market one and it was extremely bad, the colours were off and the battery drained so fast I had to keep charging the phone during the day, now I am not sure if this is applicable to the Macbook, perhaps someone would have information about the battery life using this kind of displays
It's unlikely that this display would affect the battery life of the MacBook. The iPhone 12 probably drained faster because it was likely replaced with an LCD screen instead of a more power efficient OLED screen. The MacBook Air already uses an LCD screen.
Am I the only one who thinks the replacement screen has a green/blue cast? I saw that True Tone is inactive. But can this panel be color calibrated without it? If the color shift is as bad as it looks in the video, it can't be used for any visual creator tasks.
I found a late 2019 MacBook Pro with an i9, 32 go ram and 2tb of storage for $100 at a local pawnshop. Only caveat was that it was MDM locked… I did bypass the lock but I ended up selling it because it was going to keep showing the profile as long as the server it was tied to would still be up.
You can reprogram true tone, the hall effect sensor for lid-closing sleep mode and everything else you lose as long as you keep the broken screen to transfer across the serial numbers.
Doing the math. Depending on how much you made from this videos ads and sponsored content. This computer could be close to or free. Congratulations 🍾🎊🎈🎉 Luke.
I purchased an M1 Mac Air for $350 secondhand a few months ago and it still has 95% battery life and it’s a boss machine!!! I used it attached to my old Thunderbolt Display and so now I have a two display computer for a few hundred.
dude this is insane, even the broken ones usually go for way more, so that price is wild! You could either fix it to get a cheap laptop, or just remove the display to make it a $150 Apple Silicon Mac Mini! At that point, it's actually LESS than the price that Apple charges for their Magic Keyboard and Trackpad combined, truly insane :D
I bought a MacBook Air M1 Base for $250 a year ago with a cracked screen that I thought about replacing. The problem is the keyboard was damaged as well and a European version. From my understanding the Touch ID won't work if you replace it. Also to replace all those parts is way too much. So for now it's a Mac mini that my kid uses connected to a monitor. Doesn't need to take it on the go so not sure it would even be worth fixing.
Luke, I always get excited when you do a video like this one. I think that, yeah, I could do the same thing. Then, I think that there must be some times when you did not get an awesome deal like the Apple Silicon Mac, so the good deals and bad deals would kind of average out. I realize that you are an expert, so you would avoid more of the bad deals than I would. After reasoning it through, I decide to just enjoy your videos and pay up on Apple products to avoid the bad deals. Thanks for your videos, Luke.
I felt your pain when you opened that box. Last year I ordered a 2012 Macbook and when I got it, it wasn't even wrapped in bubble wrap or anything, just newspaper under it. It proved worthless as it came dented on the corner.
Facebook marketplace. Found one for 300. Definitely a crazy one of a kind find. Just gotta keep your eyes peeled. It is crazy how cheap the M1 are going for now. People are having a tough time selling them at 500. That is insane Trying to find a buyer for a 512 GB upgraded one now at 650 and it’s just mind numbingly frustrating
Great Find Luke!!!! this reminds me of my 30$ airpods pro i got a few months ago! i found some airpods pro that were used on ebay for 30$ but they were listed as for parts/non working but the pictures in the listing seemed to show that they were working so i messaged the seller and it turns out that they listed them wrong! so i bought them! and surprisingly they still had about 4.5 months warranty left on them! theres only about a month left on that warranty now though because ive had them for about 3 months...!
grabbed a MacBook Air m1 with a broken logic board and cracked bezel for free, got a logic board for 323 dollars with Touch ID, and a total cost of 333 dollars, which is fantastic
Mmm... so this display can be replaced without the Apple proprietary calibration software like on the MacBook Pro 14/16. Just curious, is True Tone still working? LE: Found out that True Tone is not working but is it still OK that is useable anyway. On the Pro 14/16 sot so much.
Back in 2021 I bought an 2020 13" M1 256GB MacBook Pro for $225 from a pawn shop on 40 battery cycles, only defect was on the bezel where it says "MacBook Pro" there was a tiny crack, there's definitely some gold out there for sure!
Dude, you always seem to find these great deals on "old" or "damaged" Macs. good for you. Question....what do you do with all those repaired macs...sell, give away? just asking. Keep up the great videos.
I would´ve thought that it might be a scam and actually be a 2020 Intel model or older because if I remember correctly the M1 Macbook Air doesn´t come with 128GB SSD as stated in the listing
i live in a small non tech town in SW Georgia , My local pawn shop has sold me 2- 3 M1 Macbook Air 2020's for $220 out the door , my recent one i purchased even has Apple Care + on it & 45 battery cycles
I paid a €120 for a liquid damaged M1 Air few weeks ago. Managed to repair the logic board (pain in the ass, but it works now). Due to liquid damage, the trackpad, the trackpad cable and intermediate board for the keyboard were gone as some of the components fell off due to corrosion. Also the small battery PCB got hit by the liquid and it stopped working. I managed to find a good but mangled top case with all those items for €40. And another €30 for a good used battery. So I guess mine was even cheaper ;)
must admit i thought the screens were locked down to the motherboard, good to know. sorrt to sound dumb but what do you mean locked down by the cloud account ? can't you to a complete re install of the o/s?
I got an m1 air with 30 battery cycles from Mercari that only needed a bottom case cover for 330$ same thing though the seller shipped it like a child would.
I bought a used M1 Mac Air 16GB RAM + 1 TB storage for 600 Australian dollars (which is 380 USD) - in great condition, genuine one with icloud clock reset. Such a great value find in FB marketplace!
