What should I consider when buying a refurbished iMac?

BlairAZ wrote:

What should I consider when buying a refurbished iMac?

Buy refurbished Macs only from Apple or OWC. They are truly refurbished & warranted.

Too many people who bought used or supposedly "refurbished" Macs off eBay & other online sites have discovered the hard way that the Mac they got wasn't actually refurbished and/or the previous owner is still the owner and the system cannot be reinstalled or updated.

Apple discontinued 27" 5K Retina iMacs when they switched from Intel chips to Apple Silicon chips. All of the M1, M3, and M4 iMacs have 24" 4.5K Retina screens. All of them can drive one external display (and a few high-end M4 iMacs can drive two), but if you want a single large display, the iMac might not be the way to go.

Other options:

• Pair a Mac mini with a large display or two, a keyboard, and a mouse.

• Pair a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with a large display, a keyboard, a mouse, and perhaps a docking station. Note that Mac notebooks with plain M1 and M2 chips support only one external display. Mac notebooks with plain M3 chips support one display with the lid open, two with the lid closed. You need a plain M4 chip, a Pro chip, or a Max chip to be able to drive two external displays with the lid open.

Whatever Mac you get, get at least 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal SSD space. You can't upgrade RAM or internal SSD space after purchase.

Most recent Macs do not have traditional USB-A ports. That's not a big deal. There are many ways to go from USB-C (USB) to USB-A (USB) or vice versa, including

• The Apple USB-C to USB adapter
• Simple powered USB hubs that plug into a USB-C port and give you four or more USB-A ports
• USB-C and Thunderbolt hubs and docks that give you USB-A ports along with other stuff (like a HDMI port or DisplayPort, a SDXC card slot, and an Ethernet port)

USB-C has displaced USB-A because it can carry all of the same USB signals that USB-A can, but is also able to handle things (like DisplayPort and Thunderbolt) that are beyond USB-A's capabilities.

Hiya BlairAz

I would recommend the 13-inch M2 chip 8-Core CPU 8-Core GPU 16GB Unified Memory 256GB SSD Storage iMac. It is lightweight, cheap and small.

Take a look at these Refurbished Mac - iMac - Apple - differences are minor, choose what suits your budget.