Refurbs? Potential future mac user questions

A few days ago my desktop's motherboard finally let go after months of giving me the what for. I have been brooding the past few days as to what to do as far as a main computer replacement.

Given my current time circumstances, and number of hobbies, I have come to the conclusion that building a new rig from the ground up is out of the cards, due to money and time constraints. My desktop was primarily used for media editing, audio recording/mixing, Tablature reading and writing, and general internet shenanigans. So I have been thinking about a Mac as a replacement.

I recently discovered the Refurbished section of the apple website. I was wondering if anyone had experience buying a refurbed apple product?, and if so, what the results were?. I was looking for a 27" iMac and the deals in the refurbished section seemed pretty enticing.

Also, what is the performance gap between an i5 and an i7 iMac? my dell laptop has a q720 gen 1 i7 in it and it seems plenty fast, so I was wondering if I could save some by getting a gen 2 i5 over the seemingly price premium for the i7 models.

I bought a refurbished 27" iMac a few weeks ago. The quality is excellent, cosmetically it is perfect, no scratches or blemishes of any kind. And it's been just as great using it, no problems at all.

Apple refurbs are a great value, you get the discount and they are practically identical to brand new. You even get the 1 yr warranty that the new items come with.

The i5 is plenty fast, I looked at benchmarks and concluded it wasn't worth the extra for an i7. Just Google it and there are plenty of comparisons of the different processors in the iMacs.

Apple refurbs tend to be very high quality, because they replace all visible parts with brand new pieces, as well as the battery. So the only non-new parts are the internal electronics, which don't really get "worse" much after being used (and you still have warranty anyway). So yeah, go for it!

I almost exclusively buy from the referb store. It's a great value.

Buying refurb from the Apple Store is like buying brand new from there. They all come with the same 1 year warranty that brand new Apple products do and you can still get AppleCare if you wanted to.

As others have said...their refurbs are GREAT. I buy them when I can...usually it's my impatience with new models that keeps me from doing it. But when I can, I do.

Only difference from new is that they come in a brown box instead of the white box.

That and the huge price drop.

If you already had a desktop with monitor, you might also consider a Mac Mini. You can pick up the Apple bluetooth on ebay for cheap and use your current mouse.

You obviously sacrifice some of the "all-in-one" aspect, but you could probably jam a SSD in one and still come out ahead. Just a thought.

I also buy almost exclusively from the refurb store. Three MacBooks (2 Pro, one regular) bought from there in the last 5 years. My mom still uses my old MBP 2.2GHz C2D and my wife still uses her old MB 2GHz CD. I think I saved something like $350 on my new MBP (current model).