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Refurbished tech can save you hundreds of pounds and, in some cases, it’s much like buying brand new. However, there’s no single definition of what “refurbished” means in the tech world.(“To brighten or freshen up”. That’s how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “refurbishing”.)
You can generally break down what it means in the context of gadgets into five streams. It may be a customer return, perhaps sent back just days after the original purchase. It may be a new product with packaging damaged in storage, and “refurbished” is the label the retailer decided to use. Or part of a discontinued line, but still a “new” device”.
Refurbished tech can be flat-out second hand, just given a once over and wipe before selling on. Or it could be a repaired device, something you tend to only see in specific refurb tech categories as not many gadgets warrant a repair these days.
So, phone, laptops or audio gear, should you buy a refurb? Let’s look at the reasons why you should, why you shouldn’t, and where you can actually get a tech refurb deal.
The rules of refurb
You need to look for at least one of three things when buying refurbished tech. But preferably all three. These are a darn good price, a good returns policy and a warranty similar to what you’d get buying new. The benefit of the first is obvious: why buy refurbished if you only save a per cent or two?
Free returns are a huge benefit if you will buy from a company that sells “used” refurb tech, which is likely to have some signs of use. These companies often rely on a grading system — often denoting condition with A/B/C labels. Free returns mean not just that you can send the gadget back if you’re not happy, but that the company has clearly built this into its grading system and, if anything, the product is likely to be in better condition than described. A warranty is always important, for the same reason you want a warranty when you buy anything new. You want to know you’re covered if something goes wrong.
Second-hand goods bought from online retailers are covered by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which allows for 14-day returns and repair or replacement if the gadget can be proved to be not “fit for purpose” within six months. This actually extends to six years, but after that the onus in on the buyer to prove any faults were there at the time of purchase. Good luck doing that. You are not covered for wear and tear, of course.
Now, a few areas of tech to be wary of. Older refurb phones may have been used a lot, and their battery capacity may not be what it once was. To test you could find a review of the phone that uses some form of battery benchmark, perhaps video playback, and see how the refurb compares. Battery life too short? Return the thing within the 14-day window.
There are similar issues with PC graphics cards. Some may have been used in bitcoin mining setups, which involves maxing it out its capacity for up to 24 hours a day. The kind of ageing this causes is harder to identify, but can be shown up in a GPU stress test. At the time of writing the prices of desirable PC GPUs are a mess anyway: avoid.
You should be cautious about buying a TV, for another reason. New TVs can often be returned because of dead or stuck pixels, or an inconsistent backlight. You may have a harder time when buying a refurb TV if you discover these issues, not least because TVs are not cheap for either you or the retailer to return. And the argument a dead pixel or two makes a refurb TV faulty is a fuzzy one.
A tech refurb deal can be a steal, whether it’s full-on used, a customer return or a box-damaged item. You just have to be a little more careful and pay more attention in the first two weeks of ownership, in which you can usually return a gadget easily enough. Here are some of the top places to get refurb tech of all kinds:
Apple set a refurb standard so high we have never seen any company match it. Refurbished iPads and iPhones come with a fresh battery and outer shell, making them indistinguishable from new products, bar the packaging. Most Apple Watch “refurbs” are from discontinued series, suggesting the vast majority are “new old stock”. And, well, not particularly old stock at that.
Apple no longer advertises a new shell and battery for its refurb MacBook lines. But you can expect them to look and feel new. The refurb store seems to have become a clearing house for Apple’s Intel processor laptops, which have been replaced by those with Apple processors in the Apple Store proper. It’s this, not the refurb part, that should put a few of you off buying a refurbished Apple laptop. Apple’s refurbished products come with a one-year warranty.
CeX is the biggest high street name for second-hand tech, and it does the job surprisingly well online. All of the company’s stock, to the best of our knowledge, comes from punters selling it at its stores.
Each piece goes through a multi-point check, the execution of which may vary from store, from employee to employee. This is the only thing that arguably elevates CeX’s products from simple “second hand” to “refurb”.
However, ahead of this piece we had several positive experiences buying from CeX. WIRED ordered two “B” grade Kindle Voyage ereaders. One was near-mint. The other had a small mark on the display and was returned, followed by a prompt full refund including the original postage fee.
We picked up a Logitech Harmony remote control for just £6, well below the going price on eBay. That’s roughly what you might see CeX as: an alternative to eBay. However, almost everything it sells comes with a 2-year warranty. This is excellent, double the length Apple offers.
Expect most of your buys to come without their original packaging, and possibly with a charge cable from a completely different gadget, if it has one at all. But CeX is a better online retailer than you might have assumed, and has a lot of tech treasures from years gone by in its catalogue.
Music Magpie is the top alternative to CeX. It’s an online-only operation that has a large eBay presence and its own website. Stock largely comes from people selling their items to the company but it claims the “refurbished” title through its “up to 90 point” check system. As the name suggests, Music Magpie used to be a way to get rid of your old CDs, but nowadays much of the value in its inventory comes from phones.
All tech comes with a 12-month warranty. While some who trade in gadgets complain they aren’t offered as much money as was originally stated, this is actually a good sign for buyers. It shows Music Magpie’s condition grading policies are strict, and that to achieve a “pristine” or “very good” condition rating, a gadget will appear new or nearly new.
Music Magpie doesn’t offer the same breadth of items as CeX. You’ll find Oppo phones, but not classic long-discontinued Oppo headphones. However, vouchers for Music Magpie often appear, both on eBay and its own store, which can make its otherwise only reasonable tech buys more appealing.
There are two refurbished areas at Amazon, Renewed and Warehouse. They are quite different. Amazon Warehouse is where you find Amazon customer returns. Prices vary widely, from virtually the same as the usual price to a genuine bargain.
Judging by the WIRED team’s experience, descriptions of each item’s condition are usually very good. “Small cosmetic imperfections” can often mean it looks new. If it is not described as “Like new”, there’s a chance an accessory may be missing, but interactions with Amazon’s customer services are usually great. An offer of a return or a partial refund seems to be standard policy.
Amazon Renewed is a little different. This stream of the Amazon megastore lets other companies sell refurbs and customer returns through the network. Giant tech brands including Dell, Apple, HP, Lenovo and Samsung use Amazon Renewed. All the Amazon Renewed items we pulled up are described as “works and looks like new”, suggesting much of it is simply unsold stock of older lines.
eBay is probably the largest repository of refurbished tech. But can you trust it?
A lot of the biggest retailers around sell through eBay. Argos, Music Magpie, Currys and Laptops Direct all have a huge presence on the site. XS Items is another notable refurb companies on eBay.
However, any private seller can list an item as “seller refurbished” and this is often misused. As when buying from Amazon, pay attention to who you are actually buying from.
eBay offers solid buyer protection, with a system that effectively forces the seller to pay for the return of an item if it is legitimately not as described. And if you pay by PayPal there’s another avenue to start a claim if you end up dissatisfied.
Ok, so Cash Converters probably does not belong in this list. It’s much more a “pawn shop” than a refurb store. It makes no claims about extensive checks it employs, the returns policies are guided by the minimum standard stated in consumer rights regulations. Its online presence acts as an overflow of sorts for its high street stores and store managers appear to choose what to list, if they do so at all.
However, it can be a bit of a tech nerd’s paradise. You’ll find classic home cinema amplifiers and receivers, high-end projectors and ancient audiophile speakers that will still outperform just about any smart speaker, often at sub-eBay prices. Buyer beware, but there’s plenty of gold in the Cash Converters tech trash pile.
EuroPC is one of the largest resellers of refurbished computers, and doesn’t deal in laptops traded in by Dave from Bromley. You’ll find tech from cancelled business orders, excess stock from manufacturers and computers refurbished by the manufacturer.
True bargains are fairly rare on EuroPC, though. Prices listed on the website do not include VAT either, a sign the company is really setup to cater for businesses rather than ordinary folks just out for a new laptop.
There are two divisions of Dell dedicated to selling refurb computers, Dell Refurbished and Dell Outlet. Why two? Dell Outlet sells primarily its consumer lines, like XPS, Inspiron and Alienware. Dell Refurbished deals with business laptops and desktops such as Latitude and Precision lines. Standard pricing is rarely jaw-dropping, but the Dell Outlet often offers vouchers that make the jump to a refurb worthwhile.
There’s a refurb area on Fujfilm’s own camera store. Fujfilm says these are retailer returns. It may often simply be the case you get a camera from a retailer that ordered too much stock of a line. You’ll only find Fuji cameras here, of course, but they come with the same 12-month warranty as a new camera. Prices do not tend to be all that much lower than the norm in some cases, but every now and then you’ll find a hot deal for one of FujiFilm’s excellent mid-range mirrorless models.
Sennheiser’s Outlet sells customer returns, often at dramatically reduced prices. You’ll find items from both its consumer headphones and the Sennheiser pro line, which predominantly offers microphone equipment. This is one to check out every so often if you would like a pair of home headphones, which pop up on the Sennheiser Outlet every now and then. They offer Apple AirPods Max-grade sound (minus almost all the features) at a fraction of the cost.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
