Apple Begins Selling Refurbished M1 Mac Mini

[RedRaven571]

At this point, I will wait for the [expected] MBP refresh later this year.

edit: LOL, when I clicked on the link, there was a 13" MBP with M1, 10 seconds later, it was gone.Must've gotten snatched up by one of you.

edit2: Now there are multiple 13" MBP with M1 processors on the refurb page.

 

[mackcat]

They must be. Did they have any 16gb 512 gb for sale and if so what was the price?

I believe I saw one at $959. Hopefully they will show up again soon.

 

[-DMN-]

Or a veteran. The verification process took less than a minute.

I’m a vet as well bro. I meant Military as in active/veteran. Tried to find the best lingo to include everyone.

 

[Captain Trips]

New: $1299
Refurb: $1099

Hey you, stop bringing facts to an internet discussion!

 

[satchmo]

Don’t think you’ll find a cheaper desktop Mac than these for a long time...if ever.

It’s very tempting but so is the forth coming redesigned iMac (and smaller Mac Pro but that’s in a different class).

An iPad-like iMac with thin display would certainly be nice but likely double the cost of this mini.

 

[HappyMBAowner]

Honestly, after exchanging my 2020 MBA with intel for a 2020 MBA with M1, intel machines should be sold at 50%. They're worth less than that actually. The M1 is a totally new world.

 

[citysnaps]

How much mileage do the disks have on them?

It depends on how much credence you want to give a couple of tweets amped up and published by iMore. From people that likely have zero insight/knowledge into how Apple's underlying SSD tech works.

For sure a lot of people got breathlessly frothed up. I found that aspect very entertaining.

 

[ncbill]

256GB is plenty for me. Even with Logic and all of its additional content. I find more storage just leads to more clutter and crap I never actually use. Sure, I guess it's not great if you need to store lots of high res video or tons and tons of RAW photos, but comparing it to a 16GB phone is silly.

With the issue of excess wear & tear on the internal SSD still in question M1 Mini owners should really be running from an external SSD for now anyway.

 

[jlocker]

Honestly, after exchanging my 2020 MBA with intel for a 2020 MBA with M1, intel machines should be sold at 50%. They're worth less than that actually. The M1 is a totally new world.

As long as you don't care about EGPU boxes, or High-end Video cards, Bootcamp with Windows 10 or currently the most compatible applications with Mac OS X or Oculus VR headsets or 32gb or 64gb of RAM for a computer or multithreading for a processor.

 

[HiVolt]

256GB is plenty for me. Even with Logic and all of its additional content. I find more storage just leads to more clutter and crap I never actually use. Sure, I guess it's not great if you need to store lots of high res video or tons and tons of RAW photos, but comparing it to a 16GB phone is silly.

With a desktop its easy to add external storage as well. Too bad that the current M1 mini's only have 2 thunderbolt ports.

 

[Lankyman]

I would like to see Apple come clean about recent reports that the SSD could be toast within a couple of years with the M1 chips.

 

[Baff]

My bad, I thought it took over a year before seeing refurbs

For iphones, yes. For macs it is typically about 3 months. I'm not sure about watches or other products.

 

[Chompineer]

I would like to see Apple come clean about recent reports that the SSD could be toast within a couple of years with the M1 chips.

Nothing to come clean about, all that's happening is a bunch of people making inferences.

Apple never published the TBW rating for the SSD, and more-over, exceeding the TBW rating just means you've exceeded what the manufacturer guaranteed the drive to, it doesn't mean it suddenly dies. Plenty of SSD's out there with multiple petabytes of write on them that are still 99% healthy.

I have drives with over 4x the rated service hours on them, they work fine.

If manufacturers took the time to respond to every baseless claim, that's all they would be doing.

 

[Baff]

Are they already out of the 16GB versions??

They can come and go pretty fast when they first become available. Last night there were 5 models available (including a 16GB/2TB for about $1450). Right now there are 2 different models. An hour from now it might be back to 5. Check every day, or a couple times a day. I've bought about a dozen refurbs over the years and been quite happy with them. They have all arrived looking brand new in original factory packaging and have the same warranty as a new model. I have occasionally heard stories of people having a scratch on their refurb, but mine have all been pristine. So far I have had no regrets (the only issue I ever had was covered by the warranty). Last night, I bought a 16GB/1TB for $1099 (plus tax).

I rarely buy refurbs of non-Apple products, since they are usually just used and not factory refurbed at all. A typical "refurb" laptop on Amazon is scratched, bent, missing 3 keys, and sparks when you touch the power button. By "refurb", they mean that they took a few moments to wipe most of the peanut butter (that is what you'll assume it was, since you really don't want to think about it) off of the keyboard.

 

[Iconoclysm]

Having only 256GB on Mac is like a 16 or 32GB iPhone. They really need to start Macs with at least 512GB or 1TB

I think the comparison is way off, Macs have expandable storage in many forms including a simple external drive.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

I think lots of people picked these up over the holidays to get a first hand experience with Apple Silicon and then returned them under Apple's extended return policy to save up for the next release.

Or believed the hype that they were "much faster" than Intel Macs (they aren't) and rushed out to get them, only to discover that VMware didn't work, so they couldn't run that one Windoze app that they critically needed.

I'm telling clients to buy Intel Macs now while they still can, avoid the "new sexy" because it's nowhere close to as capable as an Intel Mac.

Meanwhile, I'm cursing Apple for doing something so stupid and not just adding AMD as a supplier, or even making their own x86 clone chip if they really couldn't get past the "not invented here" garbage.

These things are rapidly self-destructing their soldered SSDs.

I just thought of a product that hopefully somebody will decide to make! A bolt-on bottom that adds a centimeter or so to the height of a MacBook Pro, and give you a much larger battery, a couple NVMe sockets, a Thunderbolt hub, and space for more battery or an optical drive. Mac laptops are too thin now anyway.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

They can come and go pretty fast when they first become available. Last night there were 5 models available (including a 16GB/2TB for about $1450). Right now there are 2 different models. An hour from now it might be back to 5. Check every day, or a couple times a day. I've bought about a dozen refurbs over the years and been quite happy with them. They have all arrived looking brand new in original factory packaging and have the same warranty as a new model. I have occasionally heard stories of people having a scratch on their refurb, but mine have all been pristine. So far I have had no regrets (the only issue I ever had was covered by the warranty). Last night, I bought a 16GB/1TB for $1099 (plus tax).

I rarely buy refurbs of non-Apple products, since they are usually just used and not factory refurbed at all. A typical "refurb" laptop on Amazon is scratched, bent, missing 3 keys, and sparks when you touch the power button. By "refurb", they mean that they took a few moments to wipe most of the peanut butter (that is what you'll assume it was, since you really don't want to think about it) off of the keyboard.

Apple refurbs are better than they used to be.

For about a decade, I'd warn clients that getting an Apple refurb meant that there was about a 50% chance that the new to them computer would be spending some time in the shop almost as soon as it came out of the box. I'd let them know I was fine with it if they really wanted to do it, because I'd make money fixing it under warranty, just expect that they would have a bit of time without it.

They're rarely bad out of the box now.

 

[mclld]

Why is the Intel Mini more expensive? I thought the m1 blew away all the previous minis

 

[Victor Mortimer]

Why is the Intel Mini more expensive? I thought the m1 blew away all the previous minis

Because the Intel is better.

Don't believe the M1 hype. It's real-world slower.

 

[Baff]

Why is the Intel Mini more expensive? I thought the m1 blew away all the previous minis

Because Apple never does bargain basement pricing even on 3+ year old models. Their discounts are based mostly on the original price, rather than on performance or age.

 

[alfonsog]

I sent one back. 16GB/1TB. I'll wait for next one or the pro. My music software will not be updated for years anyway and I was really frustrated with the bluetooth issues.

 

[mclld]

Because the Intel is better.

Don't believe the M1 hype. It's real-world slower.

So what all Minis would be better for me? I am looking to buy a newer computer and was going to buy the base mini. I just use it for basic computer stuff and photo/video editing

 

[Baff]

I sent one back. 16GB/1TB. I'll wait for next one or the pro. My music software will not be updated for years anyway and I was really frustrated with the bluetooth issues.

Thanks for saving me $200, your kickback is in the mail!

 

[macsound1]

Having only 256GB on Mac is like a 16 or 32GB iPhone. They really need to start Macs with at least 512GB or 1TB

While I'd usually agree, Apple way under specs the base model, mac minis aren't always used like MacBooks or iMacs.
I have a stack of 3 Mac Minis and the only thing on the internal storage is the OS and software update cache files.

 

[jlocker]

So what all Minis would be better for me? I am looking to buy a newer computer and was going to buy the base mini. I just use it for basic computer stuff and photo/video editing

I have been running my 2019 MacBook Pro 16 with 32gb of ram and 2 TB of storage and it has been running like a champ for the last 15 months, along with the Razer EGPU with a Nvidia 3080 video card connected to a Samsung Odyssey G7 32in 240hz monitor.