Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

People are slamming Apple for its ‘brutal’ trade-in prices

Apple has come under fire for its Mac trade-in prices, with one person claiming their $50,000 Mac Pro was valued at the shockingly low price of less than $1,000 by Apple.

David Imel, a researcher for YouTuber Marques Brownlee, posted a screenshot of a valuation they had received from Apple for one of their office Mac Pro computers, which cost them $52,199 (and which Apple still sells for the same price). Apple’s valuation was $970, which is about the same price as an iPhone 14 Pro.

Recommended Videos

Just tried pricing out our $52,199 Mac Pro's at the office for trade in, which you can still buy from Apple, $52,199.

What else has dropped 50x in value in 3 years.. besides crypto? pic.twitter.com/pRESBQBoT4

— David ImeI (@DurvidImel) January 17, 2023

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Apple lists all the maximum prices it will pay for traded-in products on its website. For the Mac Pro, that amount tops out at $1,250. If you’d paid $52,199 for one, that represents an almost 98% drop in value, despite the Mac Pro still being available for that same price.

Amazingly, a refurbished Mac Pro with similar specs to David Imel’s sells for $39,239 on Apple’s online store.

Imel was not the only person to receive a disappointingly low estimation from Apple. Twitter user @jasonbshew shared a similar story where they were offered $720 Canadian (roughly $540 U.S.) for their 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip, a price they described as “brutal.” This particular model — with a 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, and 4TB of storage — was still being sold by Apple for $4,299 as recently as the morning of January 17, if our calculations are correct.

Shop around for better prices

Julian Chokkattu / Digital Trends

Apple’s trade-in prices have never been particularly attractive, with the company usually offering far less than other outlets. It is possible that Apple is banking on customers being willing to take the financial hit in return for the convenience of being able to return an old product and purchase a new one in the same transaction.

We tried putting a refurbished 14-inch MacBook Pro through the process. The device is the base-level model with an M1 Pro chip and was bought in late October 2022 for 1,619 British pounds (roughly $2,000). If we were to trade it in with Apple today, we would receive $795 for it. That’s a 60% drop in two and a half months.

It’s not just Macs that offer poor value for money if you trade them in through Apple. The company says it will give you up to $570 for an iPhone 13 Pro Max — previously one of the best iPhones before the current generation — although we were only offered $540, despite saying the device was in good condition. From other companies, we were able to get up to $751 for the same device.

Apple cut its trade-in prices in November 2022 and has done so again since that time. In November, you could get up to $650 for an iPhone 13 Pro Max, which is $80 more than Apple says it will give you today.

If you are thinking of trading in an Apple device so you can upgrade to something else, it is almost certainly worth shopping around first to see if you can get a better deal elsewhere. Based on this evidence, it’s unlikely you will get an attractive price from Apple.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
23 years ago, Apple launched one of the most beloved Macs of all time
Apple iMac G4 desktop computer.

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the launch of the iMac G4, which is still regarded as one of Apple’s best Macs to this day. When it arrived in 2002, it redefined what we should expect from computer hardware and software, yet it only lasted a couple of short years before being discontinued. What happened, and why was it so important?

Released in 1998, the iMac G3 -- the direct predecessor of the iMac G4 -- reinvented Apple and helped get the company back on its feet when it was on the brink of bankruptcy. Yet despite its playful colors and design innovations, there’s no doubt that it was limited by the technology of the time, with its huge chassis dictated by the bulky CRT monitor contained within.

Read more
I desperately want MacBooks to steal this trackpad feature
Someone using a MacBook Pro M4.

One of my favorite things about using a MacBook Pro is the trackpad gestures. For years, I’ve been able to swipe through different windows, open Command Center or Launchpad, and check notifications while hardly moving my hand at all.

Most Windows laptops I try have an inferior overall trackpad experience, but like most things in tech, that hasn’t lasted for long. I’ve recently been trying the Asus Zenbook S 14 — powered by Intel’s latest Lunar Lake CPU — and one of my favorite features is the way Asus has approached the trackpad. It’s quickly changing my opinion of Windows laptops as a whole.

Read more
MacBook Pro M4 teardown shows a repairability rut for Apple laptops
The MacBook Pro 16-inch on a table.

The updated slate of MacBook Pros, powered by the M4 series silicon, has once again established Apple’s performance dominance in the segment. However, a teardown courtesy of the folks over at iFixit has confirmed that not much has changed internally, which means the usual repairability snags are still here.

Starting with the new elements this time around, Apple engineers seem to have redesigned the logic board, increasing the heatsink size and shifting a few component locations. The ports are easy to replace on the new laptop, and the battery is repair-friendly as well.

Read more