Used iMac | Second Hand iMac

Used iMac- Second Hand iMac Guide

Having recently purchased a used iMac we are in a great position to write this guide from firsthand experience. The second hand iMac we opted for was 20” 2.66GHz model from 2008 with 320GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. It cost £499 including some pretty rapid delivery so it just squeezes into the sub £500 bracket usually reserved for older Macs.

There are a couple of downsides to this model though. Although it has the new aluminium casing, the screen is not full widescreen. The resolution is 1680×1050 meaning it is a slight struggle to work on two programs at once. You can still manage it but being used to a 1920×1080 means we are missing the extra width somewhat. The 20” screen on these used iMac models isn’t quite up to the standard of the larger sizes. It uses dithering to create the millions of colours and this can lead to a minor faded look to colours further down the screen.  Designers will have trouble with it, editors of blogs will hardly notice though… The other shortcoming is the paltry 2GB RAM. Okay, the iMac uses RAM very conservatively but we always prefer 4GB in our machines. One trip to Crucial though and we can replace the 2GB with 4GB for a mere £35.99. A machine bought with 4GB would have cost more than this on top of the money we paid.

A new iMac will set you back at least £999 so getting something decent for half this was quite a challenge. In fact, the optimum price point for a second hand iMac is about £700. This will get you a 24” model with a similar Core 2 Duo processor as above and some extra RAM and hard drive capacity. We didn’t go for this for two reasons. One, 24” is too big for our non-designer/used to laptops eyeballs and we wanted to rigidly stick to budget.

When buying a used iMac you need to decide what size screen you require and work a budget from there. A 20” (21.5” more recently) model should be around £550-£750 depending on specification and age. The newer widescreen models will be at the business end of that range. The 24” used iMac will be £650-£900 and the 27” can be anywhere from £800 to well over a grand. Bear in mind a brand new 27” iMac starts at £1,399 so don’t expect a year old model to be much less.

Once you have settled on a size and budget the main factors to consider when buying you second hand iMac are age and specification. We’d recommend sticking to the newer aluminium models, as the previous Perspex is looking a bit grubby now. You’ll also be guaranteed at least a Core 2 Duo processor  – the minimum we’d recommend for a modern setup. The first aluminium models used a slower chipset with a smaller cache size, so try and avoid anything before mid 2008 if you can. Hard drive space is essential, but usually the standard drives are enough and RAM can always be upgraded cheaply from Crucial. If you can get the ideal machine straight off then brilliant, but you may need to budget for extras like RAM, keyboard and mouse. Oh yes, plenty of second hand iMacs won’t come with these as the sellers can keep them to use with newer models, or sell them separately for more. Another trick is to supply an Apple compatible keyboard etc that is more at home on a PC.

At Used Mac we tend to recommend private sales for the best bargains but some small shops do offer refurbished iMac models at decent prices. However, you are likely to pay over the odds when buying an iMac refurbished as these sellers need to add a mark up to cover the work and any warranty etc.