Points per dollar: ranking every used Mac desktop
Divide what a used Mac scores by what it costs and the whole secondhand market sorts into one column. The 2020 M1 mini still tops it. The surprise is how close the race has gotten — and how badly the scalped machines lose.
The 2020 M1 Mac mini is the best used Mac desktop value in our Aug. 24-25 market snapshot. It delivers 17 Geekbench 7 multi-core points per dollar of median asking price, narrowly ahead of the M2 and M4 minis.
That one number compares 11 used Mac desktops across six years and two product lines. More points per dollar means more processor performance for the money; memory, storage and I/O still matter and are not captured here.
Used Mac desktop value rankings
| Machine | Year | Median ask | Multi-core | Pts/$ | Value rank | Single-core |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac mini M1 | 2020 | $509 | 8,645 | 17.0 | 1 | 2,191 |
| Mac Studio M1 Max | 2022 | $1,863 | 14,252 | 7.7 | 6 | 2,226 |
| Mac Studio M1 Ultra | 2022 | $4,878 | 23,344 | 4.8 | 10 | 2,224 |
| Mac mini M2 | 2023 | $610 | 9,808 | 16.1 | 2 | 2,398 |
| Mac mini M2 Pro | 2023 | $1,180 | 13,639 | 11.6 | 4 | 2,401 |
| Mac Studio M2 Max | 2023 | $2,559 | 17,371 | 6.8 | 8 | 2,535 |
| Mac Studio M2 Ultra | 2023 | $4,262 | 28,246 | 6.6 | 9 | 2,518 |
| Mac mini M4 | 2024 | $990 | 15,349 | 15.5 | 3 | 3,276 |
| Mac mini M4 Pro | 2024 | $1,956 | 21,830 | 11.2 | 5 | 3,332 |
| Mac Studio M4 Max | 2025 | $3,511 | 25,800 | 7.3 | 7 | 3,498 |
| Mac Studio M3 Ultra | 2025 | $9,509 | 35,270 | 3.7 | 11 | 2,917 |
Three things fall out of the column.
Why every Mac mini outranks every Mac Studio
The worst mini value, the M4 Pro at 11.2 points per dollar, outscores the best Studio, the M1 Max at 7.7. A used Studio’s price buys memory capacity, memory bandwidth and I/O — the things a benchmark table doesn’t show — and buyers are paying for exactly those, not for processor speed. If multi-core throughput is what you need, the secondhand market has been saying “buy a mini” for a while.
Why M1, M2 and M4 Mac mini values are so close
Six years separate the M1 mini from the M4 mini; 1.5 points per dollar separate their values. The used market prices these three generations almost perfectly efficiently — $509 buys 8,645 points, $990 buys 15,349, and the ratio barely moves. The tiebreaker is the single-core column: the M4’s 3,276 is about 50% above the M1’s 2,191, and single-core is what a machine feels like to use. Rank one on the metric, but the metric understates the newer chips for interactive work.
Why the M3 Ultra ranks last
The worst value on the board is the shortage itself. The M3 Ultra’s 3.7 points per dollar isn’t a verdict on the chip; it’s a $9,509 median ask against a $5,299 list price — the scalping premium, quantified. That premium now has a shipping-day deadline, so every row of this table is a snapshot with a shelf life — the date is in the data note, and the table gets rerun as the post-announcement market settles.
About the data: Median asking prices for live used, open-box and refurbished listings observed Aug. 24-25 across the channels we crawl; scam-shaped listings excluded. Medians mix memory and storage configurations within each chip, which understates the value of base configurations on chips with many upgraded listings. Geekbench 7 figures are chart averages, recorded as comparable references, not our own tests. Asking prices are not completed sales.