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UK: 2017 12" MacBook for £799 - Just bought one

S

Stiss

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 18, 2009
887
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England
As the title says you can currently get the 2017 12" MacBook for £799 at a number of retailers including John Lewis, Currys and Amazon.

I've bought one to replace my 2013 11" MacBook which has served me well but is dying a slow death with booting to black screens and ever decreasing battery capacity.

Also nice to go to a retina screen finally and twice the amount of storage and RAM.
Got it from John Lewis for the two year guarantee.
 
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Yes it's INCREDIBLE at £799. We've never seen MacBook prices so low here in the UK! Heck, even my first MacBook, a 2010 white unibody one was £830 at the time :)

STRANGE that the 512GB is not reduced in price though.

Surely, at £799 the MacBook is a bargain for its beautiful quality. This price actually makes it more affordable for students :)
 
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BODYBUILDERPAUL said:
I don't believe that there is an update coming. Apple don't tell 'other shops' when a new range is coming.
Click to expand...

They may not tell them, but they will offer them a massive discount so they can shift excess stock, which is what they will have done here (they do the same with Best Buy in the US).

That’s a great price but it’s bad news for me...I ordered 2x MacBooks (one for my wife) in the recent BB sale which worked out at £650 each (I’m travelling from the UK to the US now and will collect them from a US friend). I changed my mind and bought an MBA in the sale and my plan was to try and sell the MB for £800 when I get back but that will be a struggle now.....at least I sold my existing laptops before the JL sale!
 
The_Interloper said:
Just £719 today on Currys eBay store - brand new and sealed. This is due to a 10% off sitewide coupon for Fri 14 and Sat 15 June. Had to bite at that price - what a bargain!
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Wow, this does sound a good deal. I had a look on the Currys eBay store and didn’t see it so perhaps they are now sold out? but perhaps you could share the link either here in the thread or by DM. And if you could add the information about the site wide coupon that would be grand too. Thank you.
 
The_Interloper said:
Just £719 today on Currys eBay store - brand new and sealed. This is due to a 10% off sitewide coupon for Fri 14 and Sat 15 June. Had to bite at that price - what a bargain!
Click to expand...
Wow! Makes my purchase of a used one for £660 a few weeks ago look a bit lame! OTOH I might have done same again because I actually only put £244 on the counter because I was trading in several items and you get a better price when trading in. And it was in new condition (14 cycles) with 2 yrs warranty.
 
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addictive said:
Wow, this does sound a good deal. I had a look on the Currys eBay store and didn’t see it so perhaps they are now sold out? but perhaps you could share the link either here in the thread or by DM. And if you could add the information about the site wide coupon that would be grand too. Thank you.
Click to expand...
All sold out on Friday evening - Currys must have sold tens of thousands of pounds of MacBooks in just a few hours.

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/ap...code-pricewin-fri-14-sat-15-june-only-3246949
 
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Just picked up one today for £799 at my local John Lewis store. Great price. At the store the sales guy was trying to get me to to pay an extra £500 for a MacBook Air and telling me it was a much more superior machine, I told him that might he so but the laws of diminishing returns tells me it’s not worth paying 60% more for it.
 
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ravinder08 said:
Just picked up one today for £799 at my local John Lewis store. Great price. At the store the sales guy was trying to get me to to pay an extra £500 for a MacBook Air and telling me it was a much more superior machine, I told him that might he so but the laws of diminishing returns tells me it’s not worth paying 60% more for it.
Click to expand...
I found it fascinating that apple are too stubborn to reduce their own price. This exact laptop is still £1249 on the apple website. Actually disgusting
 
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ravinder08 said:
Just picked up one today for £799 at my local John Lewis store. Great price. At the store the sales guy was trying to get me to to pay an extra £500 for a MacBook Air and telling me it was a much more superior machine, I told him that might he so but the laws of diminishing returns tells me it’s not worth paying 60% more for it.
Click to expand...

Had the same thing happen to me at the Leeds store. I know the Macbook Air is 'better' but it is nowhere near £799 and also the size is what I wanted. In the grand scheme of computing the MacBook and MacBook Air are a lot closer than say the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro 13''
 
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The deal is still ongoing, and I am pondering to get one - the price is really incredible, when compared to the refurbs that Apple is selling for 1059!

Is everyone who has made use of the deal happy with their purchase, are they regretting anything due to physical build (screen, keyboard), or performance? Would you still recommend it for basic office and web use? Am pondering whether to return my MBP 2019 (nearly 2K) for this, as the portability is really something else...

Many thanks!
 
I got one from John Lewis, £799, bargain. I am currently only using it as a desktop, clamshell, plugged into a 4K screen with bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. It was cheaper than a Mac Mini (I know not the same performance etc) with the benefit of just picking it up and taking it out. Biggest thing for me is silence, no fan! I've had MacBook Pro and Air all noisy and annoying when fan kicks in.
I'm not running anything stressful, but have Parallels with Windows, swipe between 3 desktops, loads of Safari tabs, runs great. Memory pressure showing 43% (iStat Pro) and temperature 44 degrees closed clamshell. (it's currently 30 degrees outside!)
Tried it as a laptop :) and it's brilliant. I had a MacBook Air 11" and thought that was magic, this is better. Double the Ram and SSD that I had on that plus great retina screen.
Bought it on impulse on price, didn't open it for over a week just in case I wanted to send it back. SO GLAD I OPENED IT AND KEPT IT.
 
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Fozziebear40 said:
I got one from John Lewis, £799, bargain. I am currently only using it as a desktop, clamshell, plugged into a 4K screen with bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. It was cheaper than a Mac Mini (I know not the same performance etc) with the benefit of just picking it up and taking it out. Biggest thing for me is silence, no fan! I've had MacBook Pro and Air all noisy and annoying when fan kicks in.
I'm not running anything stressful, but have Parallels with Windows, swipe between 3 desktops, loads of Safari tabs, runs great. Memory pressure showing 43% (iStat Pro) and temperature 44 degrees closed clamshell. (it's currently 30 degrees outside!)
Tried it as a laptop :) and it's brilliant. I had a MacBook Air 11" and thought that was magic, this is better. Double the Ram and SSD that I had on that plus great retina screen.
Bought it on impulse on price, didn't open it for over a week just in case I wanted to send it back. SO GLAD I OPENED IT AND KEPT IT.
Click to expand...

Sounds great. Nice to hear you are happy with your purchase. I really wanted to get one before it was given EOL status. I didn't want to buy a machine from 2017 and one port though. However, I'm certain Apple will revive the chassis at some point most likely with their own A-type silicon and once it has Thunderbolt and more than one port I'll buy.
 
Fozziebear40 said:
I got one from John Lewis, £799, bargain. I am currently only using it as a desktop, clamshell, plugged into a 4K screen with bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. It was cheaper than a Mac Mini (I know not the same performance etc) with the benefit of just picking it up and taking it out. Biggest thing for me is silence, no fan! I've had MacBook Pro and Air all noisy and annoying when fan kicks in.
I'm not running anything stressful, but have Parallels with Windows, swipe between 3 desktops, loads of Safari tabs, runs great. Memory pressure showing 43% (iStat Pro) and temperature 44 degrees closed clamshell. (it's currently 30 degrees outside!)
Tried it as a laptop :) and it's brilliant. I had a MacBook Air 11" and thought that was magic, this is better. Double the Ram and SSD that I had on that plus great retina screen.
Bought it on impulse on price, didn't open it for over a week just in case I wanted to send it back. SO GLAD I OPENED IT AND KEPT IT.
Click to expand...
Thanks, this is quite encouraging. I did try to ask John Lewis about their return policy if I intend to return it, and it seems quite contradictory - I am not sure whether they would take it back if I were to test it during the 35 days period. They keep saying that it needs to be ‘unused’, but a customer service person said that as long as it doesn’t have personal data, it can be returned. Have you been told that it needs to be sealed in order for it to returned?
 
Oh man, I’m seriously tempted by this offer. £799 with John Lewis’ 2 year warranty seems a no brainer. Ideally I wanted the top spec refurb from Apple but at £1609 it was too expensive. Now it’s disappeared from the store anyway.

My current laptop is a 15” mid 2012 MacBook Pro with the 1680x1050 anti glare screen. I’ve added a 500gb ssd and 16gb of ram so it’s pretty fast - enough for me anyway. It’s a beast though, super heavy, the battery life is none existent and the fan is extremely noisy. On paper at least the MacBook fixes all those issues at a pretty cheap price.

It’s the 256gb ssd that concerns me.

Decisions, decisions...
 
TheBigApple2006 said:
Thanks, this is quite encouraging. I did try to ask John Lewis about their return policy if I intend to return it, and it seems quite contradictory - I am not sure whether they would take it back if I were to test it during the 35 days period. They keep saying that it needs to be ‘unused’, but a customer service person said that as long as it doesn’t have personal data, it can be returned. Have you been told that it needs to be sealed in order for it to returned?
Click to expand...

I had a bad experience returning an iPhone SE so I didn’t want to go through it again. If I had decided to return it, it would have been sealed, no questions asked!
 
Well, I slept on it and then pulled the trigger on the 2017 base model from John Lewis this morning. £794 after using a £5 voucher.

I’ll not be able to set it up for 10 days or so due to holidays and work, but I’m going to start cleaning up my current MBP to make the transition easier.
 
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