Should You Buy Refurbished Electronics?

Should You Buy Refurbished Electronics?

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Is buying refurbished electronics a great way to save money, or a risky gamble on a mistreated gadget? Techquickie explains.

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50 Comments

  1. the common misconception that refurbrished hardware or used hardware is bad and outdated no longer holds true. You can get close-to-new components for a fraction of the dollar cost of the retail price. We believe its important to re-use hardware!!

  2. I just bought a refurbished hp the other day and it was brand new. Not a scratch on it, the power cord was unopened.

  3. I bought a 3000$ MSI laptop for half the value and it was sold as "used" but in fact the company who sold it to me is known to buy pallets of returns. I think it’s more honest to sell them as "used" than refurbished. Refurbished means new parts to me.

  4. You can get a great deal on a refurb Pc
    HOWEVER,
    It will be old tech. Not the latest nor the fastest altho they may have WIN11
    The HDD will be smaller. Look closely at Walmarts Pc line. Most are refurbs.
    I was looking at DELL business computers and thought I was going to get
    a great deal until I read the specs CAREFULLY. I ended up buying a brand
    new DELL i5 12th gen w 8G ram & 256G SSD which I upgraded to 16G ram
    and a 4T SSD. I paid $499 from DELL. Brand New. I’m into it for about $800

    !

  5. As the man says, buying new is STILL a lottery.
    I bought a new ultrabook (Dell XPS 13), kept it in immaculate condition, used it only moderately. One day it just stopped powering up. In one day from perfect to nothing. The only out of warranty repair Dell can offer me is I pay them for a refurbished motherboard. They get to keep the original motherboard as part of the contract. So in the end my ‘bought new’ laptop is going to be a refurbished one.
    (What they will do with the original motherboard is anyone’s guess – probably apply an easy fix and sell another device at huge profit)

  6. I quite like a low level of "fixer upper". Case in point – my ‘new’ laptop was a grade C, had no HDD, but was tested to BIOS and everything ran just fine.

    New SDD, a HDD caddy to replace the Blu ray…

    Happy days

  7. Do you guys recommend buying a refurbished gpu from msi on newegg? I found 2 models of the 3080 from msi, one of them is a GAMING Z TRIO(600$) model, and the other is a VENTUS 3X PLUS(588$) there are both from newegg, and they are way cheaper than the ones that are sold locally in my country.

  8. WARNING!!!!
    Got a stuck phone. the phone looked completely different from the original. now I don’t mean that there was a little wear and tear on the phone, it was a completely different phone. The camera at the back could be detached as it was only glued on. You also didn’t get a charger that worked. And I didn’t get any tree certificate either 😂

  9. Currently considering a refurbed version of the laptop I’m about to buy, price difference is like £10, but the refurb one has a much better GPU in it. RTX 3060 6gb vs 3070 8gb, the benchmark scores are way better and I’m thinking that these laptops are probably built around the same time period, so they are as old as one another, but the refurb has clearly had a fan issue or whatever and been sent back. Might just do my part for the planet and get a refurb.

  10. @Linus-Sebastian & @Linus-Tech-Tips:

    I’m sorry Linus, but <timestamp-1:25>-to-<timestamp-1:31> reminded-me-of when Monica Geller accused Chandler Bing of being "a dropper".

    (Please note, this scene is for-reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqNCbopXE2k ).

    I propose putting a competition (a comparison, in this case (I guess an <overlay between all the times each person has dropped stuff> would be the only way to do it, since Chandler Bing is a fictional character)) between Linus Sebastian and Chandler Bing to see who is even-MORE "dropper".

  11. I simply refuse to buy anything refurbished unless it’s unopened. I would rather spend extra money than use a product that’s already damaged, used, and not fresh anymore

  12. One week of warranty? 😂 In the EU, second-hand goods sold by a retailer benefit from a mandatory legal warranty of one or two years, depending on the country. This does not apply to goods sold by an individual or at a public auction, though.

  13. I bought a refurbished acer Chromebook 311 c722 for work, school, and casual use. I bought 2, not having faith in them, and it performs perfectly! The second one I gave to my sister who’s uses is for education.

  14. As a tech in the refurb sector let me say that goods that are damaged are insured and sent to recyclers. Less scrupulous recyclers will attempt to refurbish them and resell them after being paid to dispose of them. The company I work for buys out corporate leases and auctions from large tech giants such as google when they do layoffs or upgrades. Really it comes down to contacting your merchant. If they don’t want to chat, odds are they have something to hide.

  15. He says to not buy hard drives or SSDs refurbed, but what about a laptop that has a SSD in it? I found a refurb laptop on Amazon that I really like, but it has a 90 day return window, not like a year or anything, should I be concerned?

  16. Basically amounts to where you buy it from. Refurbished could be a great deal or it could mean we did a quick once over and didn’t find a problem and you’re getting a lemon. Graphics cards in particular are notorious for this. They will literally plug them in see if they function and mark them good in some places. I’ve literally got a DOA graphics card that was supposedly refurbished directly from EVGA.

  17. I understand ssd, but hdd is actually a fake news
    Refurbished by the producer hdd’s are tested better than any normal drive you would find in local store
    Sometimes, they are even better than any new drive, because they are older, and new hdd’s, well, kinda sucks
    they are being cheaped out to be exact
    they still are fine as a mass storage, but 40mb/s vs 100-180mb/s is a big difference
    and longevity is also cut down in new ones

  18. 10 years ago, I bought a refurbished laptop for $500 off Amazon. Other than a drive swap to an SSD, it’s the device I’m using to type this message now. She works great even now.

  19. laptops and electronics can get so expensive. I am going to buy a lot of refurbished electonics during university.I am not gonna spend a fortune buying brand new.

  20. Just pay the extra buck and you know at least you for longer. Bought this T490 Thinkpad refurbished for around 400 bucks , it has 48GB of RAM DDR4 , and they called it "like new" (it looked like it). But when running chrometabs or vscode it was struggling and often time was lagging behind…. Even just running roblox is a big challenge as it gets UPTO 3 to 20 FRAMES PER SECOND MAX (when the CPU is cooled down)

    i was wondering why my cpu was at 50-60 degrees while just running a chrome tab so i decided to take a look at the thermal paste and low and behold the ones who refurbished it put wayyy too much of it to the point that it was spilling over …..
    After changing the thermal it was still the same ;/

    Decided to buy a GIGABYTE G5 MF5 for double the price but it was well worth it.

  21. I only buy refurbished monitors as my backup/2nd monitor in a dual monitor setup. They always last at least 3 years minimum and at $26 each, it’s well worth it.

  22. maybe this isnt the best idea, but ive bought all of my moniters from the acer official refurbished store on ebay, i got a 1440p 240hz 32in panel, and a 1080p 24in 240hz moniter, and they both came in good packaging, no signs of use, and worked as intended. and it is SO MCUH CHEAPER. im talking like a 30-45% discount, which is a lot of money when you are talking about the 300-600 dollar range.

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