Advice on buying used mac for business

[Land and Sky]

Hi All

This forum seems to be an amazing resource, and I'm sure all the answers to my questions are here somewhere but as i'm looking for something kinda specific I thought I would start a new post. If there is a thread that relates to this please send a link.

I run a video business, shooting documentary for brands etc, but i'll be the first to admit that I'm not super techy.

So I shoot video in 1080p on Sony cameras and 2.7 and 4k on my drone. I have an iMac desktop at home on which I edit (but I send most of my work to an editor).

My Macbook Pro is dying. It's a 2010 model which has been brilliant but at this stage it won't even view 1080 AVCHD footage from Sony. 2.7k is out of the question and it now struggles with YouTube and Vimeo.

So I need to get a new laptop that I can use to review and back up 1080 and 4k footage while out on shoots. I may do some basic video editing on it but it's very unlikely. I'll be backing up to a an external HD.

Although I find it kinda frustrating to be locked in to a a relationship with Apple (all my devices are), I don't really want to switch to a different operating system unless it makes a lot of financial sense. As I just need to the laptop for reviewing footage on shoots, editing photos and surfing the web I don't want to spend too much money (I have a capable computer at home). I'd like my budget to be around £500 or less for a used Mac of possible.

Am I right in thinking a Macbook Pro or Air with i5 processor, somewhere around 2013 model would be adequate?

Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks

 

[Premal212]

I have had the following MBPs over the past few years (All of them mid spec CPU + Max RAM possible)

13" MBP 2011
13" MBP 2016
15" MBP 2018

I can say that the 2011 model struggled big time to edit with FCPx on 1080p footage, you can probably pick these up for around £200 on eBay. There just wasn't enough grunt in the machine to handle this.

The 2016 model could not edit 4K well, 1080p was fine, that was very smooth when using FCPx, Premier was a little slower but nothing drastically different.

The 2018 model handles everything beautifully, 4K60fps motion graphics is a beauty, even with the crappy Adobe Software.

I would recommend picking up potentially a 15" Retina model, perhaps from 2015, I'm unsure whether you can these for around £500 though maybe another member can help out there. Editing 1080p is pretty much okay with the retina models, I believe you need a 15" 2016 onwards to edit 4K.

As for viewing, a retina machine should happily run 4K footage, and edit 1080p easily. Probably your best bet.

 

[Land and Sky]

That's brilliant info. Thanks very much Premal212.
I will keep a look for a Retina model, 2014 or newer. Happy to stump up a little extra budget so I know it will work.

Thanks again