Best value preowned iMac?

[D1on]

Want to buy an iMac, been looking on ebay at pre owned and refurbished ones, 2017 ones look to be a sweet spot for value, any advice or recommendations?

[mmm-five]

If you don't want to risk ebay, then you can get refurbed (and fully warranted) ones from the Apple Refurbished Store.

I've got 3 of my last 4 iMacs from there.

I don't know what your budget or performance requirements are, but I'd stay away from anything dual-core, and anything with a single HDD (personally, I'd even stay away from the hybrid SSD/HDD Fusion drive if possible, but you may be happy with one).

Do you need a 27" screen or will the 21.5" suffice?

If you don't want to pay the Apple premium for memory, you'll have to get a 27" model as the 21.5" model doesn't have user-installable memory (no hatch in the back to do so).

For example

• a June 2017, 21.5" 4k iMac, quad-core i5 @3.4ghz, with 8gb RAM and 512GB SSD is £1379
• a June 2017, 21.5" 4k iMac, quad-core i5 @3.0ghz, with 8gb RAM and 256gb SSD is £1169
• a June 2017, 21.5" 4k iMac, quad-core i5 @3.0ghz, with 8gb RAM and 1TB HDD is £1019
• a June 2017, 21.5" 4k iMac, quad-core i5 @3.4ghz, with 16gb RAM and 1TB FUSION SSD/HDD is £1299

Once you start going to 5k 27", the prices are a bit higher, for example:

• a June 2017, 27" 5k iMac, quad-core i5 @3.4ghz, with 16gb RAM and 512GB SSD is £1779 (i.e. your paying £400 more for the bigger screen and the 256gb larger SSD)