Bought an open box Macbook Pro 14 M3 Pro after zero research

[jharvey71884]

Spent days researching. Went to Best Buy dead set on buying a Mac Mini Pro and iPad M2 Pro 12.9 open box. It was going to be $1249 for the mini and $845 for the iPad M2 Pro open box.

But the associate convinced me to buy an open box MacBook Pro 14 inch M3 Pro with 18gb ram and 512 SSD. He said it hadn’t even been registered. Guy literally brought it back immediately. He knew because he sold it to him. Not sure how I let someone with little tech knowledge convince me to change my plans.

I got a good deal. The unit was only $1630. My question, who has bought an open box at Best Buy before on the computer side? Been happy? Since I didn’t do any research , I’m questioning my decision. I do sort of like the idea of having one machine. And it was cheaper.

Lot of Canva work. Some Final Cut Pro work. Currently have Mac Mini M1 and first generation iPad Pro.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

The only real "Drawback" to buying open-box from BBY or other retailer, is that the "Original" purchase date (For warranty & AppleCare+ eligibility) is the original sale date to the first customer. Sometimes those open boxes sit around for quite a while before being sold, and it can put you outside the 60-day window to be able to add AppleCare (if that's your desire).

If the fellow you spoke to handled the original sale, he can of course give you a DATE as to when that happened, which would alleviate some of that concern.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

On another note - I tried to use a Mac mini & iPad Pro combo for about a year and a half (M1 iPad Pro/M1 mini). it was a struggle. I ended up selling the iPad & got a MacBook Pro so now I have the M1 Mac mini, iPad mini 6, and a 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro... the M1 mini is "Mostly" superfluous in day-to-day use but I did add a 4TB NVMe Thunderbolt to do a full sync of photos, so that they're then backed up to Time Machine and to a 3rd party cloud backup. MacBook Pro is amazing.

 

[UnifiedMelody]

would only impact if you want to register for applecare else not a big deal

 

[AlexMaximus]

Back then, when I still lived (for 8 years) in the US, I did never ever experience anything bad with my BestBuy purchases. I had a lemon once with a Toshiba Laptop, but that was not BB fault. I am very confident, your open box purchase with BB was an excellent choice. Nothing to worry about. And since you have already a M1 Mini as well as an older iPad, the recommendation from that store employee was totally correct. Now you have a great situation. It is always better to widen your platform instead of renewing it. Because, - the bitter truth - most new devices are not that much better than your current devices. The days of staggering Hughe CPU power gains are long gone. We are left with Hype train and live style choices that are connected to sexy marketing and propaganda. But in reality most would be fine with decade old tech. In your case, a new laptop is way better while keeping your older m1 mini and the iPad.