Camera · 30 seconds
Is the camera the one this Mac shipped with?
This model was sold with a 720p camera. If the stream comes back below that, the sensor is either faulty or has been replaced with a cheaper part — both of which are worth knowing before you pay.
Resolution
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Frame rate
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What to look at while it is running
- Wipe the lens first. A smeared camera is the single most common reason a Mac “has a bad webcam”.
- Cover and uncover a window. Exposure should settle within a second or two, not hunt back and forth.
- Look for a fixed dark speck that stays put as you move — that is dust behind the lens, not on it.
- Check the image is not tinted. A strong colour cast that never corrects is a sensor fault.
How does the picture look?
Worth buying alongside it
The bits and pieces most second-hand Macs turn up without
Refurbed — Refurbished MacBooksMuch the same idea, mostly European stock. Worth comparing against the others before you commit.View ›Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSDStorage on an Apple Silicon Mac is soldered down, so a 256GB machine stays a 256GB machine. An external drive is the way around it.View ›Thunderbolt / USB4 HubPuts HDMI, an SD slot and a couple of USB-A ports back on a Mac that only came with two sockets.View ›
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