Refurb 2018 vs. New

[arctair]

There's a maxed out 2018 Mini in the refurb store with the exception of the drive (has the base 512) for $1099. Is it worth spending a few hundred more for a brand-new version with a 1TB drive? Will an external Thunderbolt drive ever equal the speed of an internal? Any other issues with going refurb?

Tl;dr: Is this a good deal? Never bought a refurb before.

 

[Boyd01]

Bought my refurb fully-loaded Mini from Apple four months ago. You would have never known it wasn't new - except for the price that was 15% less. It has been perfect in all respects, I can't see any reason why you would pay more for the same thing, with the same warranty. If you don't see the configuration you want, just wait awhile. I have seen just about every imaginable option pass through the store. I had to wait about a month to get the one I wanted, but I wasn't in a hurry and it was worth it.

Lots of people have posted external thunderbolt SSD benchmarks and the read speeds are comparable but the write speeds are significantly lower than my 2tb internal SSD. However, the smaller internal SSD's are slower and about the same as a good thunderbolt disk. But those external thunderbolt disks are expensive, if it were me, I'd just wait until the configuration I wanted appeared at the refurb store. FWIW, here's my internal SSD

 

[jrgl050]

I don't see the one your talking about on the refurbished site today so you either got it or someone else did. I picked up one of the Mac Mini's 2018 3.2ghz 6-core i7/16gb/512ssd for $1269 cause I thought it was a good deal.

 

[jayducharme]

Apple's internal SSDs will always be faster than TB3 drives. As far as refurbs go, I've bought many products from Apple's refurb store and they've all been fine. You just don't get a pretty box, but otherwise they're like new. Realize, though, that the refurb store offerings change on a daily (if not hourly) basis.

 

[arctair]

I don't see the one your talking about on the refurbished site today so you either got it or someone else did. I picked up one of the Mac Mini's 2018 3.2ghz 6-core i7/16gb/512ssd for $1269 cause I thought it was a good deal.

Yea, I decided to make this post, during which time it was snapped up. Between what I now know needs constant checking (the refurb store) and getting into options trading and hopefully sometime before 2021 some actual photo/video editing I can go back to saying "I stare at a square all day" (ok, rectangle) when they ask me "what I do".

(It would be really helpful if people didn't decide to add-on a 5x overpriced 8 GB memory upgrade to their original orders.)

 

[jrgl050]

Yea, I decided to make this post, during which time it was snapped up. Between what I now know needs constant checking (the refurb store) and getting into options trading and hopefully sometime before 2021 some actual photo/video editing I can go back to saying "I stare at a square all day" (ok, rectangle) when they ask me "what I do".

(It would be really helpful if people didn't decide to add-on a 5x overpriced 8 GB memory upgrade to their original orders.)

I received my mini by way of UPS this morning....using it to type this msg. As a imagery analyst for many years I know first hand about staring at a screen.

 

[ignatius345]

Between what I now know needs constant checking (the refurb store)

If you find yourself haunting the refub site a lot, this might help: https://refurb-tracker.com