Apple Mid 2019 MacBook Pro with 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 13.3-inch, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD Space Gray (Renewed)
Apple Mid 2018 MacBook Pro Touch Bar with 2.7GHz Intel Core i7, 13.3-inch, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD - Space Gray (Renewed)
Hi all, I’ve been reading online that the M1 Pro is still a great option in 2025—and that people shouldn’t feel the need to upgrade from it. But in my case, I’m actually considering buying an M1 Pro now (refurbished), so I wanted to ask: does it still make sense in 2025?
I was originally leaning toward the M4 Pro for future-proofing, but now I’m wondering if the M1 Pro might be the smarter choice—especially since it’s nearly half the price.
My use case is around 2–4 years. Would a refurbished M1 Pro hold up well for that? Are there any concerns with buying refurbished Macs in general, like battery health or long-term performance?
Also, if anyone here has bought a refurbished MacBook from Best Buy, I’d love to hear about your experience.
Thanks in advance!
Videos
Hi, I've been looking at refurbished M1 mbp 16" with 1 tb of storage, and I've found some pretty good deals on Ebay Refurbished and Reebelo. My price range is like $1600, and these sites fit that. I'd prefer a MacBook Air 15", but once you upgrade that to 16gb ram and a reasonable amount of storage, it's like $1800. Are these sites reliable, and if not, is buying a refurbished MacBook Pro even worth it? Will it too quickly become outdated? Thanks so much for your advice!
Hi, I ordered a refurbished Macbook Pro M1 Max (10‑Core CPU and 32‑Core GPU and 32Mb ram) and it will be delivered today, but I'm scratching my head thinking if (for the same budget), could be better the new MacBook M2 Pro 12-Core CPU, 19-Core GPU, 16GB ram, 1TB SSD (or eventually upgraded to 32Gb, even if Macrumors says is useless). I'm a professional photographer and art director, and my work is based on Photoshop with huge files (Sony a7R IV 61 Mp), Capture one 22, Illustrator and a sporadic use of Premiere (4K). In background usually I have several Explorer open tabs, Amazon Music HD, Connect fonts, Keynote, Acrobat and other minor stuff...
Please help to make peace in my mind :)
Thank you!
As a photographer who has owned the 32GB 16" M1 Max since it was released, I can tell you that it is the first MBP configuration for me that has been able to run Adobe Lightroom without issue. If you're trying to edit while you have 40 other programs open (or 40 tabs in your browser), I would recommend potentially going 64GB for long-term investment purposes. I am shooting the Sony Alpha 1, so my files aren't even as large as yours.
The 32GB made SUCH a difference for a while, but lately I have been experiencing a lot of crashing and lagging again. Nothing like the 2019 predecessor, but it has been enough of an issue that I may trade my 2021 16" in for credit toward a 64GB upgrade.
Whatever you choose to do, I really can't stress enough how much better the 32GB is than the 16GB.
Good luck!
Check out a YouTube channel from Art is Right. He goes pretty in-depth with photography/photoshop/large file usage between all the different combinations of chips/gpus/storage/ram. But from what you’ve said about working with huge files 32GB and even 64GB of ram can affect your speeds greatly depending on usage. What is your typical file size and how many of those images would you be working with concurrently?
Just a little bit about what I do. Not photography work, but I do a lot of work in Pixelmator Pro/Affinity Photo. I have a M1 Mini 8/512GB and overall Mini runs great with over 100 tabs open across 3 browsers and about 5 other apps running in background. Regarding my Pixelmator work, I run into issues when I have a file pixel size of over 3k pixels and running around 40 or so more layers, and the Pixelmator file size is close to a GB or over. Things start to slow down and go to a crawl, especially when I then utilize any of the ML functions. At this type of usage, I’m creating memory swap of 40GB’s being written to the ssd. Now this scenario doesn’t happen a lot, but when I know that situation may happen I have to work around that limitation. Personally I’m deciding if a base M2 Mini Pro 16/512GB will be good enough for me, or wait for the base M2 Max studio with 32/512GB. Since my memory swap usage hits over 40GB.