4w ago

Need advice on shopping for a Macbook for a relative for Christmas

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23028638

The recipient doesn’t do any video editing or other process intensive workflows, just online banking, facebook, email, etc.
I’m trying to decide whether to buy new on Black Friday or shop the second hand market. I want something that’ll keep getting OS updates for at least a couple years.
Can anyone advise me on how to get the best value for my dollar—should I shop Black Friday deals for something new or stick to the used marketplaces like Facebook, eBay, etc? Based on the US in case that affects the answer. Thank you!

5 comments

In my experience any laptop with an Apple Silicon chip is probably a good buy. Whether the best value comes from second-hand or new probably depends on your location.
- Sounds good. Thanks for the tip!

An Air would probably be enough for those use-cases. Then you can go for black friday deals on maybe an M3, since they should be offering them at a discount with the release of the M4. Basically the previous generation before the current one should have some good deals as they try to clear inventory.

Amazon has some good prices on M3 MacBook Airs today. I would make darn sure you get at least 16GB of RAM though. Don't worry about the storage. That should last at least 5 years of web surfing.
M3 MacBook Air at Amazon
- Was going to say exactly this. Got an M1 air a couple years ago for 799 and it has been a great little laptop. M3 with 16 gigs of ram for 850 is a steal.