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

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$230 on eBay got me a mid-2015 15” 2.8ghz, 16gb and dual graphics. Virtually zero cosmetic issues apart from what you’d expect on the bottom case and no delamination whatsoever. Knew what to look for and what to steer clear of, all thanks to you sir 👍

What’s crazy is that 2019 16-inch MacBook Pros are going for $700 in decent conditions… Intel Macs are depreciating at crazy amounts

I have been playing around in the early 2010's used market for about five months now. I've managed to get my Dad a 2012 MacBook Pro, myself a 2013 MacBook Pro, and my son a 2014 Macbook Air by learning how to interpret listings, doing some simple repairs and upgrades, and being willing to accept there are limitations. All in, for the 3, I am not even in a full $300. My next find is going to be Mac Mini to use as a server. I admit, it's kind of addictive.

In Brazil Apple products are the most expensive in the world (in fact). They are usually sold for 3 times the value of the product in the USA. Currently a 2012 MacBook Pro is sold for about 700 dollars. An entry level MacBook Air M1 costs, converted from Real to Dollar, 2406.4 dollars.

Also, love the videos. I've been watching for probably 6 years, and you're the reason that I started refurbishing the old 2010 unibody MacBook pros. I've had a lot of fun doing it and your channel is great. Thanks

Still rocking my 17-Inch 2011 Macbook Pro with upgrades. Thanks Luke for inspiring me to find and repair one.

Great find. For a few years, after I retired, I was buying unibody MBPs from that era, fixing them up, and reselling them. I never had a net gain but I made enough to mostly support my hobby. That was, until the M chips released and prices nosedived. I quickly sold off and gifted what I had left and invested that money in an M1 Mac mini, and I've been on Apple silicon ever since. But I do miss my hobby.

You’re forgetting the most critical secret to your success Luke; you seem to be about the luckiest Apple consumer alive! I mean, just about every video you put out contains some variation of “I found this completely busted Mac on EBay for $100 and after 20 minutes of cleaning and $20 of parts, voila! A perfect-condition MacBook Pro I can turn around and sell for $650!” I don’t know how you do it but I can pretty much guarantee that it in NO way, shape, or form will work out like that for me or literally anybody else. I find a “Parts Only” MacBook on EBay for $100 and I can virtually guarantee what I will get will be completely disintegrated, unrepairable, and a complete waste of $100. That’s reality.

Not to mention you can always turn these old Intel Macs into pretty decent Linux machines...

It is because of Luke’s videos and OCLP that we are at this point. My first laptop was the 2013 MacBook Pro and since then I have gotten 4 more because of Luke’s videos. He took away the fear of repair and I thank him for it. The older MacBook Airs he used in high school prompted me to get one and change out the battery. If I am not editing I am using that one.

I love these bargain/fix videos. I watch every one of them. Keep up the awesome content.

I have the Late 2012 one, quite similar to yours. Installed Ventura on it (modified installer of course). I am a nodejs developer and there are certain things that are notoriously slower than a fairly new machine. But it does the job, and its screen makes it specially wonderful for design shenanigans. Fantastic machine.

5:12 That's an asset tag that you see in work environments for tracking assets. They're meant to be difficult to remove

One nice thing about these older models is that there are much less likely stolen with activation lock. I see a lot of people buying newer MacBook Pros which are apparently stolen and unusable because they are activation locked.

Pretty good deal. You still do have to provide your own AC adapter in that case. I just picked up a 2015 13" MBP for fairly cheap. Had an expanding battery, but other than that it was in like-new condition. Upgraded i7/16GB/512GB model with box/accessories. I replaced the battery, re-did the thermal paste and swapped in a 1TB Apple SSD I had (512GB one went into my OWC usb case) and now it runs great. Cost me about $230 total including the cost of the battery. Definitely a great find.

Enjoying your comments on my mid-2015 15" MBP with 2.2ghz quadcore. Still works great for most of what I do... Thanks for another great video!

Long time sub, love it! I actually use my 2015 15” Pro over my MB Air M1 most of the time. Because it works better for what I need it for. These are perfectly usable for 99.9% of people and will be for years to come. Thank you!

Well done. Been watching for years and you keep delivering top content

Hey Luke, I picked up an early 2013 Macbook Pro 15 and patched it to Big Sur. Works like a charm! Thank you for inspiring videos like this.

I've always liked your videos.. so entertaining with your humor, opinions, insights and comments.. keep it up!

I "upgraded" from a 2015 15" MBP to a 13" M1 MBP at work. I love the M1 but I do miss the larger screen of the 15" MBP at times. The only issues I had with the 15" MBP was its bulk (not too bad either), running hot during the summer and the decreased battery life. $120 is a great bargain.

Just found an eBay (surprisingly) deal on one of these (MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013) for $236 Grade B Condition. When I received it was in MY opinion Grade A ... Not a scratch on it. Just some screen delamination. I upgraded the 256GB SSD to an EVO Plus 2TB SSD and Macos up to Big Sur. I am VERY happy with the results. It's fast and does everything I need it to do. You just have to be careful with eBay though. Sometimes the deals are not so good, but I found the diamond in the rough.

Still rocking my Mid 2015 Macbook pro. I bought this a few years ago after watching one of your videos. I had never been a Macbook user, now I will never go back. In the UK there are 2018 Macbook pros selling for £500/£600!

C'mon Luke. I call BS! Your new $12 SSD had a compatible MacOS on it?

I actually just revived my 2012 MBP 15 with an SSD and RAM, and was so impressed with the performance I bought a 2012 Mac Mini and did the same. I'm dual booting PopOS and Catalina and it's fantastic as a day-to-day machine.

Wow, nice score. I like that you recognize that old Macs still have their uses.

Great video. I bought an 2013 imac out of eBay for £75. It was listed as faulty because was dead slow. Actually the hdd was bad. I bought a 512GB Samsung SSD and that thing flies. The longevity of these computers is amazing. It's 10 years old and I love it. Cheers Pedro

I loved this video! It means so much not just for accessibility but sustainability too - _every single Mac_ made in the last decade and some, which hasn't been damaged beyond repair (and that's practically all of them) is still a device with so many uses today. As people trade them around or pass them onto relatives or friends, that's simply more people who have effective and high quality computers. It'll be really interesting to see what happens another ten or fifteen years from now. On one hand, Apple Silicon Macs will probably never naturally lose their value because they blaze through every single common use of an OS with unprecedented efficiency. But on the other, new Macs will keep getting made and eventually official support for the earliest M1/M2's will fade away, and most owners will probably be quite content having gotten 7+ years out of their purchase. The oldest ones will eventually be outdated, and that's when I'd like to think we'll see this all over again. It's a long game, but we've already clearly made huge strides since not so long ago :D

Excellent video!

Brilliant! Loved this.

after watching your video about old MacBooks Air I got one from 2014, I'm so happy with it! For a fraction of price I have machine that does everything I need as a student and I don't have to worry too much about when carrying it all the time in a backpack

This is really cool and shows how good you are at finding deals. Ive only ever found 2012 for cheap and retinas that are in bad shape. Still good flips but i havent found one i want to use for myself.

Watched on a 15 inch 2012 macbook pro non retina found in the trash (gtx650m dgpu). Threw 512GB of SSD storage and 16G ram in it with a macos ventura upgrade. The thing still performs surprisingly well in even harder tasks!

How did a brand new SSD have an operating system on it already?

I bought a 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display when it first came out. I think it was $1100.00 at the Ramstein AB BX and it has to one of the best value purchase I have ever done. I still use it to this day.

Cool video indeed. I'm also an advocate for older Macs for specific purposes. I'm using a few of them for the following, to give an idea: - 2009 Mac Mini (Core 2 duo, 16gb ram, SSD upgrade) - use case: webserver (runs 3 websites, a self hosted web based invoicing tool for internal use, 2 apis for mobile apps). It is connected to a projector and is used for watching netflix. It is always turned on and has been running continuously since 2019. Costed exactly £30 - it wasn't supposed to be working according to the listing, but all it needed was an OS. - 2x 2011 MacBook Pros (both has 16gb of ram, optical drive replaced with a bay for an additional ssd and obviously upgraded to an ssd) - use case: software build pipelines, trying out linux distros, teaching kids to Photoshop and generic web browsing. The price was £80 each. Please note that these older machines will struggle under stress of using modern tools that expect more resources. I'm using way more powerful machines as daily drivers for my software development work. Still if I could justify stacking up more of these old but very reliable machines, I would do exactly that :)

That’s the model MBP I got in 2014…it had battery issues but the system worked just fine…had 2 descrete GPUs and 16GB of ram…it ran Big Sur just fine. Gave it to my bestie when I got my M1 Air.

I had a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" that I'd fixed up and used for several years, and was eventually able to give it to a friend who needed a new computer and wanted to learn macOS. I was able to move up to a 2015 MacBook Pro 15" that only needed a new SSD, as well, and it's still an absolutely fantastic machine! Got it patched to Monterey and couldn't be happier. I always enjoy these refurbishing videos, because as amazing as Apple Silicon is, there is DEFINITELY still loads of value in the older Intel Macs!

I have a mid 2015, 15" MBP, retina display, force touch track pad, all the ports etc., and still use it for light duty work or when travelling. I get incredible value out of it as it continues to age. Even had the retina display swapped twice by Apple under warranty after 'delaminate-gate'. So the display I have now is only 2 years old. What's not to like?

I bought a used 2015 15" MacBook Pro on eBay last year, I needed 1TB of storage so my pricing was never going to be low, the crazy thing is in Europe these can still sell for 800-1,000 euros, I eventually found one from a US seller and they said it was from an office setting, even with the import fees paid at the checkout I got it for 200 euros less than what I would have paid from European resellers, the MacBook arrived and it was in incredible condition, I would say A Grade. The price of apple products decrease so fast in America yet they retain much more value in Europe, you can still paid 1,000 euros for an iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max.

These videos are fun to watch and good thing can happen with Macs, found myself a 2011 iMac at a garage sale for $20! It booted up, I added more ram and the thing is great!

Love your content Luke

I'm watching this video on a 2012 i7 Mac Mini, which is currently my "TV" computer. Works great. It's true that Core 2 Duo chips these days can barely play RU-vid videos, which I think is sad. But pretty much any i5 or i7 from the past can surf the web.

With the cost of living I’m loving these type of videos and it’s amazing to see older macs have plenty of life

You can use goo gone to clean the sticky stuff off as well, just use a bit of glass cleaner afterwards to clean off the goo gone residue, works exceptionally well, and plastic razor blades help out as well

That is a win win! I hope they continue to get cheaper and cheaper in price.

Liked the song in the cleaning process!

Hi Luke, great video and nice surprise. Have this same one with dedicated graphics card and love it ! BTW, which sad adapter do you recommend? Thanks

I bought a 2016 13 inch Pro touchbar for $190 and it had flexgate. I am using an external monitor but I found out getting a new screen to even install myself is so expensive 💀

I have got a macbook pro retina 2013 with the i7, been using it almost daily since I bought it and it goes like a bullet after almost 11 years. Best buy ever

You have to really hunt for deals like that one, but they are there. After seeing this video I decided to give it a try, I got a decent deal - 2013 13" MBP high end (2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD) with 2 chargers for $165 shipped. I will either flip or sell to a friend. Only 33 charge cycles too! A few months ago I scored a 13" M1 with 16GB RAM with 1 charge cycle and all accessories (still had the display cover), and AC+ until 2025 for $700 because it was MDM locked, but the company who previously owned it was kind enough to remove the lock.

Yup, I got myself a MacBook retina 2013 2.6Ghz 16gb ram and 1Tb SSC for 180,- and patched it to Ventura. Great value!

I actually never knew about the NVMe carrier cards you could put into these. I'm using a 2015 MBP with a 1080ti in a Thunderbolt eGPU enclosure. The Thunderbolt ports on these devices give them an extra level of versatility even if they're TB2 with Apples adapters and cables. I wish I new about the carrier cards before buying a 2TB external harddrive to use as a games drive. Still though those at least work and if the internal drive ever dies, well now I know!

I bought one of these used and it kept crashing within minutes of booting, took it to a shop and they showed me that someone installed a standard ssd drive with an adapter and thats why it was crashing, put an ssd into it that's actually made for mac and it works great. Be careful with those cheap adapters.

In January of 2020 i bought a 2009 Macbook for $200 with a bunch of software on it, upgraded ram (8 GB), and an SSD. Even at the time, I still think I got a little ripped off but it wasn't by much. Now I look at these videos, and it's crazy to see what you can get for less than $200! Anyone looking on the used market today is super lucky considering how many great deals there are lol

Luke, where do you think these MacBooks boot from? You say "I guess there was a OS on this computer already" after installing a SSD in there by yourself?! Where did it boot from - the church of Mac - or your SSD? 😉

I’m still using a 27” inch screen IMAC, 15” 2014 invidia GPU MacBook Pro, and a 15” 2015 MacBook Pro. All with Intel quad cores, ssd drives and at least 16 gigs of RAM. They all run fast for my use Music production running Monterey. I spent about $1200 total for all three renewed from Amazon. Everyone of them looks like new, no scratches. All the screens are great. I got rid of all my windows PC’s except for one that I run Linux Ubuntu on. I am very happy running trailing edge, Macintosh technology.

FINALLY The type of video that I subscribed to you 3 years ago ❤

The prices on 2TB SSDs are getting pretty decent lately especially on the used market depending on model and condition.

I have a MacBook pro 13-in 2015. And it's a great laptop never had an issue with it. Solid, screen looks great. Speakers awesome. Great for school or running a little small business

Finally back to looking at old computers. Nice

I adopted a 2015 MacBook Air that I got for free, it has a broken screen but it boots fine and connects to an external display. I updated it to Monterey, and it works beautifully!

I currently own just the model Luke "restored". I own other Macs but this is one of the best. I would recommend it especially for a reasonable price even though it may be IOS limited. I would expect 3 years more use---at least.

I've been using a late 2013 MBP 15" 2.7GHz/16GB/500GB since I bought it in 2015 for work and personal stuff. One new battery and no issues. It is an awesome laptop.

11:04 I was using my 2010 iMac for a long time until I decided to get myself a M1 MacBookAir and I still love my Old iMac to this very day.

Your a legend dude✌🏽

I do remove the staingate /Delamination) as a service. The display becomes neat like a mirror.

Nice find! It's frustrating that I have a 2015 27" iMac that appears to have a bad logic board... to fix it would be at least double the cost of what you just did. Honestly, I would be happy to use it as a display :)

macbook pros are incredible computers. I am literally still using my mid-2012 pro, now 11 years old. only replaced the battery once, and 2 harddrive cables over 11 years. crazy good quality machines

Operating system on an empty SSD?

I bought an iMac 5k 2015 last week for 300 Euros, because of the screen. But it looks so good, so well kept, that I decided to not convert it to an external monitor. It looks amazing, I just updated the processor and ram to the maximum for less than 100 Euros

My first brand new Mac was a Late 2013 15" rMBP, which I still have actually. One of the best generations of MacBook Pro for sure.

I just bought a 2015, 11" MacBook Air, 4/250gb for $125, working with charger. I wanted a tiny Mac running an older OS and this was it. I am pleased.

I got a mid 09 13” pro for 65 bucks! Super fun! Love that the prices are so good right now

Still using my 27” iMac 2009 after removing the DVD drive and replaced with a solid state hard drive. And added more RAM. ACTUALLY boot up faster than originally back in 2009. 24 seconds. Works great for browsing, streaming and home server.

My 2015 i just bought off eBay this week for 301 was spotless..2.5 16 go ssd 512..i was so nervous when i opened the box but to my amazement it was in perfect condition with the box and both charging cords

I am watching this on a 2011 iMac running high sierra. cant update the os anymore, but it still works great.

I bought the same year 15-inch MacBook Pro three years ago for £200 and despite upgrading the storage, replacing the battery and removed the lamination which was already beginning to peel, it was plagued by crashes caused by the dual-graphics card. I tried getting it fixed at a third-party repair shop, but the issues remained. I eventually sold it to an unwitting person for £200.

I have this laptop and I still love it. It “may” need a new graphics card which I’m not sure I can replace or not. I have a 13” M1 MacBook Pro and the thing I hate is the lack of the magnetic power cord. And the SD card insert on my older machine is a huge plus. The main reason I got the newer machine was primarily the weight for the type of work I do.

Yeah Luke👏👏👏

The barcode looks like a company issued asset tag. Explains why the SSD was removed. Great find.

Well, not surprising considering my animations are created in a 2015 Macbook. Somehow old macs are really still able to function in 2023.

The Late 2013 MBP is actually my daily driver lol running Ventura Luckily I bought it maxed out brand new and it’s still blazing fast

Old macs really are still usable. I still use a unibody MacBook Pro in school, I'm literally the only person with a unibody MacBook Pro. Everybody either uses the school chromebook, a Windows 10 laptop, an M1 MacBook Pro, M1 MacBook Air, or a retina MacBook Pro, and then there's me, carrying around a modded hackintosh-ed 2011 13" MacBook Pro.

Great idea. Handling an SSD near bubble wrap with no anti static precautions, cool

With an incurable DEEP Apple Allergy - I never even think of that ever

Two weeks ago I purchased a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro with a core i7 2.8ghz processor, 16gb of RAM, and dedicated graphics for $280, grade A condition. And it runs Monterey natively. 340 cycles on the battery. It's more than enough for day to day operations and minor video and audio editing. Three cheers for Apple Silicon. I can't wait for the M1s to drop to this price point three years from now when I'm ready to upgrade.

I managed to get a fully working, decent condition 13inch 2019 MacBook Air for £600 ($750) and I love it. I adore it’s thin and light design and I don’t mind it not being M1 or M2 since all I really use it for is typing word documents and RU-vid viewing. It’s fantastic and I’m so glad that I bought it.

writing this form a MBP 15" late-2013 :D has been working perfectly well, well, for almost ten years, except for a battery change two years ago (150 euros cost). love this, and love the models. they're super great. super great screens. if you're doing data science, these things are still pretty fast, and can sit and do your crunching when you're doing something else, or on a different computer. I bought a Microsoft Surface Book 3 two years ago, and it feels slower than the 10 year MBP.

I can never seem to find deals remotely as good as you, at least accounting for shipping to Canada from larger markets which might be cheaper.

I have been really lucky with these. Have bought several 2012 i7 mb pros for around 60-80 $ cleaned them, repasted and put in 1tb ssd’s which i have gotten used for around 20-30$ and sold them for like 250-300$ because professionals like to use them. Newest project is a 2016 15 inch touchbar mb pro i got for 213$ fully functioning except the touchbar, 3 sticky keys and a bad battery. Just bought a new top case with working touchbar and keyboard + brand new battery for 100. Gonna put it for sale for like 650 again in a couple days

Plain-old disinfecting wipes will take off that delaminating anti-glare coating. It takes some work, but it does the job VERY well.

Still using my 2011 17 inch , basic browsing , office , movies etc , it's just the wonderfull retro mac experience

I just got a 13" Late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro for $150 total ($100 for the laptop, $50 for an NVMe SSD and adapter since it only had 128GB), but the thing is in absolutely mint condition. like no wear on the keyboard, 88 battery cycles (less than half that of my 2020 Intel MacBook Pro), 97% battery health, not even a scratch on it. I got it from my sister, and it was running the original install of Mavericks with basically no files or apps on it, so I'm pretty sure she got it and literally used it like 10 times and it sat in a laptop bag somewhere for the vast majority of it's life. It runs Ventura at an actually acceptable speed, the only bottleneck is the 4GB of ram, but even that doesn't slow it down ridiculously.

Just a sidefact cuz nobody talks about… This coating issue is not a problem on macs only anymore, it’s exactly the same with newer iPad Modells like with my iPad Air 4th gen… It’s not a dealbreaker like on the MacBooks but it’s an issue what we are running in which nearly nobody has on the radar but it’s already there and it’s an way bigger issue on that devices cause rubbing with the finger on the display is there the main peripheral…

Glad you’re taking time to do this. I recently got a MBP 2015 15” Retina for $100 without a storage device at a local thrift store. Picked up a used Apple SSD 512gb for $50. For about the price of a Chromebook, it’s working and runs Monterey just fine.

Since i started watching this channel, i have a 2012 MacBook Pro that i upgraded 2 years ago (max’d memory, new battery and SSD drive) and an M1 Mac mini.

Do a series where you buy a old pre-unibody macbook and then make it an absolute menacing machine.

Still using our 2012 1st Gen rMBP that was bought on launch Maxed out at 16GB RAM / 768GB SSD. This thing is very useful, with GT650 GPU. Only problem is one keyboard backlight LED around the D or F key is out, but the other LED still light up that area. On it's second battery too.