Advice on buying a 13" MBP?

[Marco123]

i am looking to purchase a 13" MacBook Pro and would really appreciate some advice.
I want to use it for photography and store media to stream to my to from the new Apple tv4.
But should I purchase a used one from eBay or would it be better to maybe finance a new one from the Apple Store?
Also what configurations should I look for and also any models with issues I should steer clear from?
Thanks.

 

[businezguy]

Make sure to get a Macbook Pro with SSD. Your Macbook will only run as fast as its slowest part, and the older hard drives run about 1/10th as fast as the new SSDs so it's a night and day difference. I'd recommend the 2014 models and beyond because they also have significantly better battery life and graphics. You didn't go into detail on what you plan on doing with your system, but based on what you stated 8 gigs of RAM should keep you going for a long time.

You might want to consider a refurbished model because you can save $200 or so. They still come with a full 1 year warranty from Apple so you're covered if anything goes wrong. You can even extend the warranty for a couple of years during the purchase, if you want. If you are going to be dealing with video and streaming it to your Apple TV your biggest concern is going to be storage. Once you buy a MacBook Pro you are stuck with whatever hard drive it comes with. You need 256 GB minimum. Prices can go up significantly beyond that so if you stick with 256 Gigs and run out of memory you can always get an external drive.