So this is my 2017 MacBook Pro. I've been using it for around four years. If you've been watching my channel, you might have seen it in a couple of my videos. I bought this thing in 2020 for a really good price at that point, the computer was

around three years old, which meant that it fell under the butterfly keyboard replacement program. Now, even though my particular keyboard was working just fine, I still chose to replace it. And that's because they were not only replacing the keyboards, but the entire top case along with the battery. So when

I got this thing back, it was basically like brand new. And to be perfectly honest, I've been perfectly happy with this machine. It pretty much did all I ever needed it to do. Now, mind you, this was never a high-end model. It only had a dual-core Intel i5 processor,

8 gigs of RAM and integrated graphics. But all that just worked fine for me, and I wasn't even annoyed by the lack of ports on this thing or the butterfly keyboard. But ever since I've started making videos, I did start to mind the fact that this thing only had a 128 gigs

of storage. Now, even for 2017, that number just seems ridiculous. Now, even though I was happy with this machine for the past couple of years, I was on the lookout for a slightly more capable computer. Now, I'm not one of those people who goes out and

buys a new phone or a computer every time a new model shows up. And I also don't like buying new stuff if the old computer still serves me well. But I'm also a bargain hunter, and I just like keeping track of prices on these MacBooks because I used to resell them.

so every day I would check my local marketplaces just to see whether or not there was anything of interest. Now if you're familiar with secondhand Apple markets, you know that there are a lot of scams. So unfortunately 99% of the time when I saw a great deal it was

unfortunately a scam, but one day I saw an ad for a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro for $120. It was being sold for parts, so my first instinct was, oh this thing must be stolen and iCloud locked. In the description, the guy said that the screen

is broken but the computer does output video to HDMI. What also confused me was the fact that this guy was a top-rated seller and he had been on the platform for around four years. Scammers usually use burner accounts which get deleted in a few days and they usually have ads for

like brand new unused machines for ridiculous prices. In my experience, they don't really tend to sell parts machines. By looking at this seller's account, I could see that he had some other computers for sale, so this guy was clearly a reseller of laptops. So I

started talking to him and he basically said that this computer came in a lot from a business and that he had no experience working on Apple computers. He told me that there was an account he couldn't get into but also that there was a guest account, and he

had sent me a screenshot of that that had basically told me that the computer probably wasn't iCloud locked. Now there used to be an official Apple service where you could check the serial number to see whether or not the device was reported stolen or iCloud locked. Unfortunately you can't do that now, but

there are still third-party services that let you check the serial number and I've used one which had told me that the computer wasn't stolen or iCloud locked so since the guy was local to me I just decided to take the chance and buy the

computer so the next day I went to meet with him and the guy was super cool and honest and basically told me that he was a reseller but he had no experience or interest in reselling Apple products so my hope for this machine was that it

only had a broken screen so I could use it with an external display but I had no idea whether this computer had any other issues with the graphics or the motherboard or anything else I also had no idea about the specs or the exact configuration of this machine but I

figured for that price it was worth a shot so when I got the machine home I gave it a quick wipe down with a microfiber cloth and some alcohol and I've also used some alcohol wipes on the glass screen which is something I like

doing after that it was time to start testing out this machine and upon starting it up I could see a faint Apple logo now I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see that but to me that was a clear sign of something being wrong with

the backlight so I hooked this thing up to my external display and just like the guy said there were two accounts on this computer there was a guest account and also the main account which was password protected so as far as I could tell this computer was in no way iCloud locked I

have a ton of experience reinstalling operating systems on older Mac computers, but I had no idea how to do any of that on Apple silicon. So I just started poking around, and after doing some research, I've rebooted the computer into safe mode. From there, I was greeted

with a familiar looking screen offering to restore the computer using Time Machine, but also to reinstall the operating system. So I clicked on that just to see what kind of an SSD was installed on this thing, and once I did that, I began to realize that I was

dealing with a pretty high-end machine. Oh my God, oh my God! This thing had a one terabyte SSD, which was about eight times as much as I had on my previous Mac MacBook. Now throughout this video, you'll hear me ooh and ah at this thing. Now, those were just

my honest reactions, and I don't want you to think that I'm some sort of an Apple fanboy who drools all over their computers. I just bought this computer on a whim, thinking that it was some sort of a scam, or that there was something

majorly wrong with it. And I just couldn't believe what I was getting for 120 bucks. So anyway, this thing started reinstalling the operating system, but it said it was going to take something like 3 and 1/2 hours, which at

the time I didn't have. So I just canceled the installation until I had the time to deal with it. So before actually reinstalling the OS, I wanted to wipe the SSD. Once I did that, I just started installing macOS Ventura using the

built-in online installer now you can also apparently use a bootable USB like for the older systems but I just didn't have a bootable Mac OS Ventura USB on hand and this just felt more convenient now it said it was going to take quite a

long time but that's actually because the first part of the installation is spent on downloading quite a large installation files once it did that the installation was moving along quite quickly it took about an hour if memory serves once the installation was done the computer rebooted which was kind of

nerve-wracking because I couldn't see what was happening on the real screen and my external screen went dead so I was panicking for a while because I thought the computer died or something but after a couple of minutes the computer came back to life and I was greeted with

OS Ventura splash screen ah okay oh my God again excuse my moaning I was kind of excited at the time so I went through the usual signing process and after a couple of minutes I was greeted by the Mac OS Ventura desktop oh

my God what the hell okay so I guess it's time to explore this thing so we already know this thing has a terabyte of storage but um this is legitimately the first time we're going to be taking a look at the specifications and I'm not sure what

we're going to find because this particular model has several configs so we'll see what I have what the heck the what I Jesus man this thing has an M1 Max and 32 gigs of RAM I never had 32 gigs of RAM like

Seriously, I never even had a Windows PC with that much RAM. There was a gaming PC I built like years ago, and that only had like 16, I think, and it was like DDR3. I also had MacBooks, which I've upgraded to 16 gigs

of RAM back in the day when you could do that. Wow, man, wow. So, I just started poking around this machine, making sure that all of the basic functions were working fine, and then I started checking some other things, like the battery. Let's see about the battery. So, it's displaying that its

health is in the normal condition and its capacity is at 88%. So, I guess you know, as Ventura, you have no way of monitoring the recharge cycles, but this to me seems pretty dang fresh. That's actually not true. There is a way of

checking the recharge cycles, and I did that later, and it turns out this thing only has like 400 cycles, which is pretty good. Next, I went online to see whether the Wi-Fi was working okay and to check the speakers. Speaker sounds awesome. Wow, they sound a lot better than my

Intel Mac speakers. That's for sure. So, one morning, I went out to take out the trash, even on Mac settings, like they're not distorted in any way. The garbage container, as I was throwing, so I did hear that these computers had a pretty good sound system, and yeah, these are

hands down the best sounding speakers I've heard in a laptop. So, the next thing I wanted to configure was the way this thing was displaying to an external screen, and basically what I wanted to do is to mirror the screen with the lid closed down. So, after doing that, there

There were a couple of more things I wanted to check, so I have the machine opened, and what I would like to check out is to see whether or not this thing has a working webcam. Because even though the backlight is clearly not working, perhaps the webcam is still functional, because

that's something I use quite often, and if I want to use this machine, it's a necessary thing for me to have a working webcam. So we'll check whether or not this one works, and if not, then I'll just get a USB or a Bluetooth webcam, or I

can actually use my iPhone as a webcam. So that's also an option. So we'll go to Photo Booth. Oh man, so the camera works! Hi there! Oh man, that's so cool! You can actually see the sensor is glowing. That's it, that's that's all I

need! I can use this computer now! I still have absolutely, I'm still lost for words. I got this for 120 bucks! What the f-- yo, what the heck! I can't believe my luck! Ah, that's so cool! I mean, I'll show you here, we'll go to

we'll go to eBay. I've looked around, I've actually been looking for a new display for this thing, not that I need it, but I was just curious. And if you actually look for this particular model, you can see them, you can see them being

sold. So this is a screen assembly, and you can see that it's quite expensive, it's around 400 bucks. So I'm not going to be buying a display anytime soon. But also wait, there was a, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's this one. So

This computer is selling for 800 bucks, so it's an M1 Pro. It has 16 gigs of RAM and it also has a smaller hard drive, so this is a 512 gigs SSD. And it says that the device has a significant LCD issue resulting in a completely black screen.

So that's exactly what I have, however it can still be used with an external monitor. Yeah, so this computer has the exact same issue as mine, and it's in worse condition actually. It's kind of banged up and it's selling for 800 bucks. This

is easily a $1,500 computer still, and I got it for 120 bucks. I know people are not going to believe me, but um, yeah, I don't [Laughter] care. Oh God, okay. So if we close this, yeah, it still mirrors perfect. Okay, good.

So one more thing left to do was to transfer all my old files from my previous MacBook. I've never actually used migration assistant before, but I'm going to give it a try. So even though in the past 10 years I've had many MacBook

laptops, I've never actually used this thing. And that's because with the older models, I would just take my old SSD and I would put it in the new machine. Obviously I couldn't do that with this machine, so it was time to try using this

migration assistant. So there are a couple of ways of connecting the computers up. And the fastest one is using the Thunderbolt ports. So I've tried that, but it just wouldn't work. I've also tried putting my old computer in target disk mode, but the new computer just

wouldn't recognize it and that's because I was using my USB charging lead which apparently doesn't work. I just thought that was the same thing as the Thunderbolt but with a different name, so I just resorted to using my internet connection. And since my old SSD only had

like 90 gigs, it really didn't take that long. And once that was done, I was honestly really impressed with the result. This didn't only copy the files, it copied the settings, preferences, everything, so I could just go back to using this thing as if nothing had

changed. I did actually redownload a couple of applications which had a dedicated Apple silicon port, just so I don't have to run them through Rosetta, even though that also works pretty good. So it was time for my old MacBook to join the pile of antiques I have. Nah, 

just kidding, I still do need a laptop I can take with me and it's going to serve that purpose quite nicely. As far as my new laptop, I'm going to use that as my main workhorse and editing rig. I know people are going to ask whether or not

I'll be attempting to repair this thing, and honestly, the answer is no. First of all, these machines are not nearly as user-serviceable as ones that I have experience with. I don't really feel like pushing my luck with this thing, and honestly, I don't really know what's

wrong with it either. I mean, there's clearly an issue with the backlight, but that could be the cable, it could be the panel itself, or something on the motherboard. Also, the replacement parts for this computer are really hard to come by, and they're really expensive, and

that to me points to the only reasonable explanation as to why this thing was gotten rid of. They probably took this thing to an Apple service dealer and they gave them an insane quota for repairing this thing. And I'm perfectly happy using this machine the way it is.

So you might ask what will I do with this machine and how will I utilize all this new power? Well, I'm no power user and to be honest this computer is probably a bit of an overkill for me, but I'm definitely super excited about the

extra storage. And there are of course things I couldn't really do well on my previous MacBook. That thing really struggled with 4K videos and it also struggled really hard with ProRes video, but this thing was pretty much made just for that. And even though this particular

video wasn't shot in 4K or ProRes, I did have the time to play around with it and yeah, this thing didn't even spin the fans up. So I will take this computer as a little knot from above. I will try making better videos with it and growing

my YouTube channel recently. I really had insane luck with these computer finds. So if you like this video, you might want to check out some of my other ones. For example, just recently I found a pretty new computer in the trash. I also do overviews, restorations, retro stuff, so if

you like that kind of stuff, uh, you might want to consider subscribing. And if you have an M1 Max, share your experiences with it in the comments. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time. Cheers.

I Bought an M1 Max Macbook For $120

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