What Was Happening
A customer who had recently moved to Battersea SW11 — one of the new-build riverside apartment buildings near the Power Station development — had purchased a second-hand MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 (A2338, 2020) from an online marketplace. The seller had described it as in excellent condition, lightly used, less than two years old. The asking price was reasonable.
The customer had paid what seemed a fair price but wanted an independent professional assessment before relying on the machine as their primary work computer. They had no way to verify the seller’s account of the machine’s history and wanted documented confirmation of its actual condition.
Our Assessment
We ran a full health check covering all major subsystems.
Storage: 512GB Apple SSD. SMART data healthy, no error indicators. 34% used — consistent with light use. SSD health confirmed at 100% estimated life remaining.
Memory: 8GB unified memory (M1 integrated). Memory test passed cleanly.
Battery: 76% of original design capacity, 614 charge cycles. The M1 MacBook Pro has a rated cycle life of approximately 1,000 cycles before Apple considers the battery below threshold. At 614 cycles and 76% capacity, the battery is on a normal degradation curve — not yet at the service threshold, but closer to replacement than purchase. At the customer’s projected use level (daily use, moderate charging), we estimated battery replacement would be needed within approximately 6–12 months.
Thermal performance: CPU temperatures under load were within normal operating range. Fan function normal. No thermal throttling observed.
Physical: No case damage. Screen uniformity and brightness within normal parameters. Keyboard and trackpad fully responsive. All ports functional. No signs of liquid damage internally or externally.
macOS: Running macOS Sonoma. No malware or suspicious processes detected in startup items or background processes.
Our assessment: The seller’s description was broadly accurate. The machine was not “lightly used” by cycle count standards — 614 cycles in 2 years is moderate-to-heavy use, not light — but the hardware was in good condition. The battery was the only item warranting a near-term recommendation.
What We Told the Customer
The customer asked a direct question: was this a good buy at the price they paid?
Our answer: yes, with one qualification. The machine was in good overall condition — the SSD, memory, GPU, and chassis were all healthy and the M1 chip would remain capable hardware for several years. The battery at 76% capacity and 614 cycles was the only item below new condition, and a battery replacement in the next 6–12 months should be planned for and budgeted. Taking that into account, the purchase was sound.
The written report documented all findings and gave the customer a baseline against which to assess the machine’s condition in future checks.
The Value of a Pre-Use Health Check on Second-Hand Equipment
Second-hand marketplace sales of laptops are largely anonymous — the seller’s history with the device is unknown and unverifiable. Common issues that are not visible in photographs or a brief test include:
- A battery at 60–70% capacity that will reach the service threshold within months
- A hard drive or SSD with SMART warnings that won’t be apparent until failure
- Thermal paste that has dried out, causing throttling under sustained load
- Liquid damage that has dried internally without causing immediate symptoms but will cause progressive failures over months
A health check that finds none of these is worth the cost for the confidence alone. A health check that finds one or more of them is worth the cost many times over in avoided repair costs or negotiation leverage if the machine was purchased from a seller who accepts returns or warranty claims.
Prevention Tips
- Run a health check on any second-hand laptop before using it for serious work — the cost is a small fraction of the machine’s value and the information is genuinely useful
- Ask a seller for the battery cycle count before purchasing — in macOS, this is visible in System Information under Power; a seller who can’t or won’t provide this is a yellow flag
- Keep the health check report — it is a documented condition record that is useful for insurance purposes and for tracking the machine’s condition over time
Local Help in Battersea SW11
We offer PC and Mac health checks at our Putney workshop for Battersea residents. Free collection from SW11 means the machine comes to us — you get a written condition report back the same day in most cases.
Related Services
- PC & Mac Health Check — full diagnostic service for any Mac or PC
- PC & Mac Health Check in Battersea — local service for SW11
More Case Studies
- PC & Mac health check — slow MacBook in Wandsworth — health check revealing drive failure and storage issues
- PC & Mac health check — family MacBook audit in Wimbledon — two machines checked together with one fault found
- MacBook screen damage repair in Battersea — another MacBook repair from the same area