I'm going to show you things to check before you buy a used MacBook now in 2024. And of all the videos I made, this one is probably going to be the most valuable because unfortunately a lot of people do get scammed. And if you know for things to look out for, you're going to be just fine. Now, I do want to do a little disclaimer on this method.
This only has a 95% success rate. And the reason why I only say 95% is sometimes people have long-term issues like with the battery or with... things just randomly shutting down or kernel panicking and that's why i typically recommend you know if you have the money to to go buy from a shop and if you don't know a shop to buy from i'll put a link to one in the description but i know not everybody has that option and this video is for you guys who need to get something right away or you don't have a lot of money to spend now before you go out and buy there are some things you want to make sure of one you want to make sure you meet up in a place that has wi-fi And two, you're going to need to bring the following items. A USB accessory to test out the USB ports. A USB keyboard if you're buying an iMac.
A USB-C charge cable to charge computers that use USB-C. A USB to USB-C adapter for the newer MacBooks with USB-C. A wired headphones. Some sort of Bluetooth device. Any other ports and stuff that you need to test that the device may have, like SD card slots or Thunderbolt 2 ports.
if you have the accessories to test them. So now that you got that stuff out of the way, we're gonna go move on to checking the computer. And the first thing you wanna check is the body and just see if there's anything like scratches, scrapes, or whatnot that you can use as either negotiation or to understand trust with the seller if they didn't mention it. But once you have that done, you also wanna go check the screen.
You wanna make sure that there's no anti-reflective coating wear, that there isn't any scratches. and that the hinge of the screen holds up at different angles. And then once you're done with that, we can go move on to testing out the computer. Alright, so now what you want to do is you want to go on the computer's home screen.
If it isn't here already, then what you want to do is go set it up. But you should be on this home screen. And now we're going to go to Wi-Fi.
We're going to make sure it's connected to a Wi-Fi network. If it's not, go connect it to a Wi-Fi network, and then we can move on to the next step. Once you have that done, you want to go up to the Apple logo in the top left, and then go to about this Mac. And this will tell you the specs of the computer, like what processor it has, how much RAM it has, the serial number, and you want to make sure that the serial number and stuff and the specs all match with what you saw in the listing. In order to get the hard drive information, what you want to do is exit out of this, you want to hold down the option key, or the Alt key, and then you want to click the Apple logo again.
and then click system information then go down to storage and then it'll show you all the different volumes that are connected to computer so you want to look for something that says macintosh hd or untitled and it'll tell you how much storage the computer hard drive has you also want to check too what medium type it is so this is an ssd but sometimes they're like hdd hard drives or fusion hard drives you can find that under medium type down there then when you're done with that you can exit out of this you can go to this little icon here called launchpad and you want to click on photobooth so you want to go switch this to video mode and then you want to press record hello i'm doing a quick little audio test to make sure the video and the audio works well as well as the microphone on this computer and then you want to play this back on the speakers to make sure video next we're going to go test out bluetooth so to do this you want to go to System Settings, and then you want to go to Bluetooth, and then connect a Bluetooth device and make sure it pairs well with the computer. Then if that goes well, you want to exile Bluetooth or System Settings, you wanna go to Safari, and then you wanna search up Cocoa Nut Battery. You can click the top result here, then you wanna click Download.
And what that'll do is it'll download a application on the computer to allow you to check the battery health as well as the cycle count of the battery. So when it downloads, you can go to the finder. You can find it in either the downloads folder or in the applications folder.
And you can search up here too. And then you can double click to open it. And then it'll tell you the design capacity as well as the cycle count.
If the cycle count seems high, like, you know... four five hundred or even more than that or if the battery health is under around 85 you may be able to use that as negotiation because a battery placement for most these macbooks is around 150 dollars so if that works out what you want to do is go back to safari again and then you want to type in keyboard tester.net and then you want to just mess around with these keys and make sure all the keys work you might have to double click the caps lock key and over for the cash lock to register but all the other keys should register i think me the f10 key or the f1 key so if a line key opens up the uh the stage manager so you don't have to worry about that key and then i do want to mention to test the top row keys what you want to do is hold down the function key on the bottom left of the keyboard and you just want to press these keys and make sure those register as well and then if you're wondering what looks like when it's done this is what should look like now we're not quite done with the keyboard yet we do need to do another test and for this test what you want to do is open up notes and then you just want to type random blurbs of information like the red fox So, so, that jumps. You get the idea. And the reason why you want to do this test is you want to make sure there's no keys that are sticking or double registering.
You just want to type on it normally and make sure it feels right to you and that things are registering correctly. Now, if I was to give like a key that's most commonly like double clicked or doesn't register well, either it'd be like the space key or like one of these common use keys like the Q, the W, the E. the a key and stuff like that so the next thing we're going to do now is test the keyboard's backlight so to do that you go back to system settings then you scroll down to keyboard and then you want to use this keyboard brightness slider and you want to make sure that the keyboard is adjusting the brightness to that slider which that looks good so you can exit out of that and then now it can test out the trackpad so do that you just want to make sure that you can open up safari go to a random web page and you can use two fingers to scroll and then you want to make sure you know things click well and if it registers that you should be fine i also want to mention too that any macbook made after 2015 has this thing called a force touch trackpad so the trackpad doesn't actually click it makes a vibration that simulates a click just don't get confused or fear that just because it it is designed that way So for this next test, we're going to go to youtube.com, and then we're going to search up dead pixel test. And then we're going to click on the first result. And then you're going to make this full screen, and you're going to stop on each different color.
And what you want to look out for is like different white spots. So like if you see like a little white tiny speck or whatnot on the screen, that's a white spot. You might also see like remnants of the previous image.
That's image retention. so if you see that stuff you can either a live with it or b try to negotiate down or just um use as negotiation to get a lower price now once you have that done you want to go test out the different ports so you want to take your usb mouse or your usb keyboard you want to plug it in the different usb or usbc ports and you want to make sure that it registers it you also want to check out the other ports too it's like if it has a sd card slot and you have an sd card make sure it reads that also like check the charger make sure that the charger works with the computer and that it actually charges up the computer it doesn't stay at like the same percentage it's at and then once you're done with that uh you want to shut down the computer and you want to run apple's hardware diagnostic test now i'm going to go put some links in the description on where you can do that for your computer model and it typically takes about five minutes to do that so it's not too long that can give you an idea of any other hardware issues you're not really familiar with like the fan and stuff like that so right now we're going to go test for different types of firmware locks and in order to do that what you want to do is go down to system settings and you want to make sure that the apple id on the top here says sign in If it has a name like you see right here, that means somebody is signed in the computer, and you want to make sure that they sign out before you head off. Then once you're done with that, you want to go scroll down to Touch ID and Password, and then you want to add a fingerprint if it does have Touch ID, and you want to make sure Touch ID works.
And then once you're done with that, you want to go and remove the password. So you can just click Change here, and you want to type in the old password. And then you can type in a new password if you want, but otherwise you can leave it blank if you don't want a password. And if you do leave it blank in order to log in the computer, you do have to press the enter slash return key. So just keep that in mind if you leave the password field blank.
Then you want to go click on users and groups and you want to make sure that there's only one user on the computer. If there are other users you want to make sure that they sign out their app id and that they're removed from the computer. Then after that you want to go to security and privacy and you want to scroll down to the bottom and click on this tab that says profiles and then you want to make sure that there are no school or work account profiles on here. and if they are make sure that the seller removes them before they uh sell you the computer and then once you're done with that you can go close out a system settings and you can go move on to the next step and then the final thing you want to check is a firmware password so in order to do that you want to put the computer in recovery mode and it should show up on a screen kind of like this if it shows up on a screen where it asks like for a password and it shows a lock icon that means that there's a firmware password and you're gonna have to have the seller remove that in order for you to reset the computer um also too once you're on here you do want to reset the computer uh typically it takes like half an hour to 45 minutes to do that so you can either do that when you go at home or if the seller has time but just make sure you're doing it somewhere that has a good internet connection and you have time to leave it and let it reset but it is important that you do reset the computer just so all these sellers previous data is removed. And then some final pointers is one, only do cash payments.
I've been noticing a lot more electronic payment scams recently. So if they only ask for Venmo and stuff like that, that is a huge red flag. Another thing too is you want to avoid online listings.
So if you go on eBay and you go on Facebook Marketplace and you see so-and-so is selling a computer and they're willing to ship it to you, don't buy shipping always check in person because sometimes there are scammers that are out there that just want your money and they're going to give you a broken laptop or not tell the truth about that laptop just be very careful and do not do online shipping scams and stuff so i hope this video was helpful in testing uh the computer before you buy it and if you did find it helpful be sure to leave a like and also to if you have any other questions feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll try to respond and get to him. Anyways, thank you guys for watching and goodbye.