- If you need a new MacBook Pro,
there's no better time to buy one than right now.
There are so many opportunities out there for the 14
and 16-inch MacBook Pros to get on sale
and even better opportunities
to pick these up refurbished from Apple.
And you might be thinking,
"Why would I go with a refurbished laptop from Apple
when there's such great deals out there on brand new?"
Well, Bob, that's a great question
and there are good reasons to go with both.
So let me explain.
So when you go to Apple's Refurbished website,
you can find some limited information on what they do
during the refurbishment process.
But the gist of it is,
when you buy a refurbished product from Apple,
you essentially get a brand new device.
Everything that you might see
or touch has probably been replaced.
There's no scratches, no dings, everything's clean.
It goes through a rigorous cleaning process.
If you get a refurbished iOS device
that will come with a brand new battery and outer shell.
Every device comes with all the accessories
and the cables that you actually need
just as if you would buy it brand new.
And it's not just cosmetic. Apple goes through and verifies
that all of the products work exactly as intended
and repair or replace anything that doesn't.
And it's not like all of the devices
that come through the Apple Refurb store are defective
or were defective.
A lot of them are just returns from people
who bought the laptop, used it for a day
or a couple of days and decided it just wasn't for them
or maybe they had buyers' remorse on the price.
But the good news is when you buy through the Refurb store,
you get some steep discounts
which I'll show you in just a moment.
In fact, I just took delivery of another
refurbished 14-inch MacBook Pro.
This is the version with the M1 Max, 24 GPU cores,
32 gigabytes of memory and one terabyte hard drive.
And I'll open this up in just a moment
so you can see what a real refurbished product
from Apple looks like.
But first, let me tell you
about when you should buy new instead of refurbished.
And honestly, there's only one reason to do that,
when you can get a good deal.
Yeah, that's the only reason you should buy a brand new 14
or 16-inch MacBook Pro over refurbished.
And luckily right now,
you can actually find some great deals
depending on where you look.
Now, if you're like most people,
you probably start off looking at Amazon.
And as you can see right now,
the base model 14-inch MacBook Pro
is showing at $1,935 being sold by Adorama.
So not even Amazon has stock of this device right now
and $1,935 is not that much less
than the $1,999 starting price brand new from Apple.
So not a big discount.
But if we jump over to B&H Photo,
another one of my favorite places to buy electronics,
they have the same base model MacBook Pro for $1,799.
So $200 off the starting price of the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
And unfortunately, you can only get it
in space gray at that price.
Silver is another $200, which is also out of stock.
Best Buy has the best deal today as of this recording.
You can save $400 on the base model,
14-inch MacBook Pro and get it for $1,599.
Now, that is a steep, steep discount.
And I gotta tell you, this right here is actually
the base model 14-inch MacBook Pro as well.
I bought this refurbished from Apple
but I paid more than $1,599 about six months ago.
So $1,599 for brand new is a fantastic deal.
So with the price, you probably can't beat it at $1,599.
Let's take a look at what Apple has on the Refurbished store
and see why it might make sense to buy it from Apple.
If we look at the Apple Refurbished store,
you can see that the base model 14-inch MacBook Pro
with 8-core CPU and 14-core GPU, 16 gigabytes of memory
and 512 gigabytes of storage runs $1,709.
Now, that is a savings of about $90
compared to what you can get brand new at B&H Photo
but it's also $110 more
than what you can get brand new at Best Buy right now.
So the best price you can get
on a base model 14-inch MacBook Pro today is from Best Buy.
Now, things get a little bit trickier
if you're looking for something a little bit better
than the base model.
For example, what I was looking for was the M1 Max
with a 24-core GPU, 32 gigabytes of memory
and a one terabyte SSD.
And if we look at Amazon, we can actually find one
and for a couple of hundred dollars less
than the $3,099 price sold brand new from Apple.
So that's pretty good.
If we look at B&H Photo,
they have that model for the standard price of $3,099.
And if we look at Best Buy, we can't find anything here
with 32 gigabytes of memory
in the 14-inch MacBook Pro models.
Now, if we come over to the Apple Refurbished store,
we can look for exactly what we want.
We have a 14-inch, we want a one terabyte SSD
and I want 32 gigabytes of memory.
So you can see right here,
you can get that configuration starting at $2,479.
But with the 24-core GPU, which is what I'm looking for,
it's $2,649 compared to $3,099.
That's a savings of about $450,
a substantial discount from the brand new price.
Now, if you're concerned about what you actually get
with a refurbished Mac,
let me show you exactly what you get.
So inside the shipping box, you get a MacBook
and the only difference you're gonna see here
is the box design.
So instead of having a picture of the MacBook on the front,
it's just white on all sides.
And right here, it says, "Apple Certified Refurbished."
And the unboxing experience is exactly the same essentially
as when you buy a brand new laptop from Apple.
And no matter how many times
I unbox an Apple hardware device,
I just can't get over how good it feels.
I love the feeling of opening Apple hardware.
So there we go, 14-inch MacBook Pro, refurbished from Apple.
And just like the retail version,
you get all of the same accessories.
You get a brand new MagSafe connector,
you get a power brick
and because this is the 10-core CPU,
this is the 96 watt version.
I think you get 67 watts if you get the 8-core CPU.
And do you even get the Apple stickers refurbished
gives you the Apple stickers as well
and black because you know it's Pro.
And maybe you're thinking, "Yeah. Okay."
So the refurbished device comes
with the accessories, big deal.
How does the device itself look?
Well, let's take a look.
Look at that. Silver 14-inch MacBook Pro
and this thing looks absolutely perfect,
stunning, brand new.
There's no scratches, no dings, even...
Let's take a look at the USB ports
and look at that, there's no marks around the USB ports,
so it's very possible that they changed the case
or somebody didn't even use this thing.
Open it up, take a look at the screen,
love that sound.
And look at the keyboard,
it looks like it has never been touched.
Apple keyboards like to pick up some oils
after just a short period of time
but this one is completely clean.
The trackpad, the keyboard, the screen,
all of it looks exactly like you would get
from a brand new Apple device.
So love it.
So essentially,
the only difference between this refurbished MacBook Pro
and one that is brand spanking new is the box it comes in.
It comes in a white box
instead of one that has a picture of the MacBook.
And you don't need to worry about having any issues
with the laptop either
because it does come with the full warranty
just like a new laptop does.
And you can even buy extra AppleCare support
if that's something that you buy for your devices.
So you can rest assure
that your device probably won't have any problems
and if it does, it's covered under a full warranty.
Now, because I know a number of you
will probably be curious about this,
the battery cycle count on this is a very low 17
and that's just 17 of the 1000 charging cycles
that Apple says the MacBook battery should last
while still retaining up to 80% of its original capacity.
Now, I've bought a number of devices refurbished from Apple.
I've bought MacBooks and IMAX and Mac Studios
and iPads and iPhones, and I've only ever had one issue.
And that was when I bought a refurbished 2019 iMac
with an i7 processor.
And the graphics card essentially had a meltdown
within the first couple of days of setting it up.
Now, I called Apple
and I wanted to get it essentially replaced
with the exact same model, but they wouldn't do that
because one thing about the refurbished store is
that the stock changes constantly.
So just because there's the version
that you want today or this hour,
doesn't mean that same version
is going to be available in the refurbished store
in the next hour or next day.
So if you find what you want,
you wanna move quick because the stock does change a lot.
Unfortunately, I had to send that iMac back
and I had to buy something completely different.
But that is the one
and only issue I've had buying refurbished from Apple.
So overall, buying a 14
or 16-inch MacBook Pro from Apple is a no-brainer for me.
You get essentially a brand new device
at a fraction of the cost.
But I'm curious,
have you guys bought from the Apple Refurb store
and did you have a good or bad experience?
Let me know below.
Also, if you need a refresher on why the 14-inch
and 16-inch MacBook Pros are so darn good,
take a look at this video right over here.
Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it.
Hit subscribe if you want, and I'll see you next time.