Top positive review
77 people found this helpful
Ouch! Loads of surprises. All good.
By Alphaman on Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2020
I figured for approximately half the price of the same machine when it was new and hundreds less than high-priced pre-owned Apple resellers offer, a 2 or 3 year old iMac would have lots of problems. Maybe a cheap keyboard and mouse. A scratched case. Dead pixels. Busted USB. Flakey logic board. But, I decided to take a gamble and buy this machine regardless of my trepidation. Then, the anxiously awaited day arrived. I saw the UPS van pull up out front and raced to the window protecting me from the Covid-19 infected world outside. The box came off the truck, and ... I was surprised from 100' away. It was the classic trapezoidal shipping container iMacs come in. Not some cheap, generic, rectangular box with bubble wrap stuffed inside. Legit Apple packing material. The UPS driver left it on my front doorstep, and keeping our social distancing, I thanked him. No need to sign and get contaminated, he said. I thanked him again. I sliced through the tape on the outer box, and lo-and-behold, a pristine Apple iMac box was inside. Not a scratch on the box, I noticed. Is this a red-herring, throwing me off, with a pile of bricks inside? I took the now-sterile inner box out of the outer box and then indoors, to slice through it's white sealing tape. Surprise. There's the standard Apple packaging, with a peripheral box nestled in it's groove on top. Designed by Apple, in California. Open it up, and yup, Magic 2 keyboard and mouse. Like new. Not even a hair, a smudge, a scratch... Surprise again. There's the iMac, delicately wrapped in it's outer light layer of protection, with an inner clear plastic layer covering the screen and parts that are oh-so-easy to scratch in packing. I peel off all the coverings, get down on my hands and knees, and look. Look harder. Turn it in the light. Look harder still. Wait, there it is! A scuff mark on the RAM bay door! Aha! I show my wife, point at it, and... it comes off. Not a scuff mark, a smudge. Not. A. Scratch. Perfect. Pristine. Ok, the electronics MUST be fried. It won't boot. Maybe it's locked by a corporate MDM. The Fusion Drive must be broken. Silently, it comes to life. That big, glorious screen in it's brilliant 500 cd/m2 glow, all 14,745,600 pixels alive. Boom, it's booted. So much faster than my old machine... I test all the ports I can. Stress test the system as much as possible, transferring files from backups, running Black Magic (873 MB/s write, 1388 MB/s read). Plug peripherals in every port and test and test. Upgrade the RAM with another 32GB to bring me to a massive 40GB. Test again. Two days of it, copying files and setting it up. Specs -- check. Wifi -- check. Ethernet -- check. Disk -- check. Bluetooth -- check. USB -- check. Download a graphics-intensive Apple Arcade game and play -- check. Surprise. I was misled. I thought this was a used computer. Yet it is flawless and flies like a banshee. Best computer I've ever owned. And I've owned a lot. Yup. Would buy again.
Top critical review
I like it 3/5
By Anna on Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2025
Just came in, was really exciting when I heard the knock at the door. Did not come in original Apple box which is fine - desktop is really big, no scratches, looks brand new. Only complaint is, I thought the desktop would come with an APPLE keyboard and mouse. I got an off brand version, I’m not really happy about that. As I do see other people had received the original apple mouse and keyboard. There was no mention of the off brand keyboard mouse in the description.
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