Refurbished 15.4" rMBP for $1599 - Is this a good deal?

[saintforlife]

Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7 with Retina Display
Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC975LL/A/refurbished-macbook-pro-23ghz-quad-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display

Is this a good deal for the 15.4" rMBP? How future proof is 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD? Will Mavericks take care of the Safari/Chrome stutter and/or lag issue? Will the Haswell rMBP really be worth $500 more?

 

[Chris5488]

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC975LL/A/refurbished-macbook-pro-23ghz-quad-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display

Is this a good deal for the 15.4" rMBP? How future proof is 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD? Will Mavericks take care of the Safari/Chrome stutter and/or lag issue? Will the Haswell rMBP really be worth $500 more?

It's not a good deal, nor a bad deal. The price is correct if you ask me. You're able to save 600 dollars on a rMBP and get it straight from Apple including warranty.

The Haswell's will have better battery life and will be faster. It's your decision if that's worth 600 dollars, not ours. The same can be said about the SSD and the RAM. I have 8GB of RAM on my iMac and I never used more than 6GB of it. Keep in mind you also have a very fast SSD so when you're actually using up most of your RAM, your computer won't slow down as much as would happen with a conventional system with a HDD. If you use programs which require lots of RAM you might be interested in something more. The SSD is basically the same story: it depends on how much you need or how much you currently require. If you don't need to carry dozens of Gigs of media, do not have a lot of games/programs which hog up gigabytes than you should be fine. I must warn you if you still use Windows a lot. Multiple OS'es and it's programs count up fast... Keep in mind however that it's possible to swap the SSD in the rMBP. You're still able to upgrade later. After all: the Haswell's won't come with 512GB standard so they'll be more expensive as well if you require more storage. The price difference will still be roughly the same.

Oh yes, forget to say something about the "Safari/Chrome stutter and/or lag issue". Can't say that for sure if Mavericks will fix it... Might find out in the Mavericks-section of Macrumors and their beta-testers, there'll be a lot of rMBP testers for sure

 

[pgiguere1]

I think the price of a refurbished 15" rMBP is really good, however the current timing to buy it isn't that good.

What I mean is that it's been at that price for a while, and now Haswell rMBPs are right around the corner, and they too will be offer refurbished in maybe 3 months from now. At that point, you'll have an improved model for the same price as current refurbished models, and they'll also probably discount the current model even further ($1299-1399?) while stocks last.

That said, 3 months is a pretty long wait and if you need a new laptop now and a brand new Haswell 15" rMBP is out of budget, I still think a current-gen refurb remains an excellent buy.

You may also want to keep an eye on third-party resellers like Amazon/MacMall/B&H and such, they tend to put old models on sales as soon as new ones come out, and their price are sometimes lower than Apple's refurbished models.

 

[mcarling]

That configuration seems to be gone already.