2011 Macbook Pro

[dylanlthomas]

So recently I switched from Android to the iPhone 7. Weirdly I quite like the experience of using an iOS device and I decided to make a virtual machine running OS X. Again, I quite like it. I should be starting university later this year and chances are I'll pick up a 2015 MacBook next year or so. Between then and now I'd like to pick up a cheap, old MacBook. I may be able to source a 2011 MacBook Pro 13" for around £100. It has a slight fault but seems easy enough to fix. It's missing the charger but a 3rd party one won't cost a bomb.

My question is, is this a good deal? How upgradeable are the 2011 MacBook Pros? If possibly I'll switch the RAM out for some faster, high capacity modules and switch the old HDD (And optical drive?) with SSDs. I have most of that stuff anyway, so the total price, along with repair, will set me back roughly £150. How will that MacBook perform? Are they still good in 2017?

Thanks.

 

[captaincharisma]

apple has never been good for upgrading hardware they are just designed to look good with limited options on the hardware side. you could probably upgrade the ram but that macbook may already have the maximum supported ram and your SSD options may be limited too if that macbook is not able to upgrade to a later version of mac OS like Sierra

 

[dudeman509]

You can add RAM and a HDD/SSD easily to those. I think they were Sandy Bridge era processors, so still a decent amount of power. 13" are usually 2-core i5s or high-clocked 2 core i7s; 15" are usually 4-core i7s.

I think it was the late 2012 models where everything was soldered in.

 

[dylanlthomas]

Thanks for the reply both! I have been trying to get hold of a mid-2012 Pro as apparently they're pretty good (triple the VRAM of the 2011 I believe, and slightly better CPU?), but I think I may give the 2011 a shot because of the price.

 

[grmnlxndr]

All Macbook PRO 13 non-retina are user upgradeable (RAM and Storage). The retina versions came everything soldered down.

Best regards

 

[kenrivers]

Don't know that this will help but I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro. I upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 16GB, swapped the mechanical drive for an SSD, removed the optical drive and replaced it with a mechanical drive. Several years later and it still boots as fast as it did the day I did the upgrades.