A few months ago, when Apple unveiled new MacBooks, I loaded the Apple Store website with my credit card ready. My wife’s ancient laptop was on the fritz, and a modern machine would make a nice gift. I found a MacBook Air for $760 — a bargain! — and ordered it with gusto.
Plenty of us are reeling from ever-rising prices of consumer electronics driven by industrywide shortages of memory components, so I’ll let you in on a secret.
On March 3, Apple started taking orders for the $1,100 MacBook Air with its latest M5 chip. That day, I ordered the previous model, the MacBook Air with the M4 chip. Instead of buying a brand-new computer, I went to Apple’s refurbished section to get about $240 off the original price.
A few days later, the refurbished laptop arrived in Apple’s signature, meticulously designed packaging. The laptop’s screen was covered in protective plastic, and the typical accessories, a charging brick and a cable, were included.
Coincidentally, around the same time, The New York Times had shipped me a brand-new M4 MacBook Air for work. When I compared it side by side with my wife’s laptop, the machines were indistinguishably pristine. I had a hunch that the refurbished one was either an untouched return or unsold new inventory.
Apple’s refurbished products, according to the company, undergo a rigorous refurbishment process to ensure that customers receive a product with the level of quality they expect from the brand.
Similar to used cars, secondhand electronics are a booming industry that could grow to about $153 billion this year, according to research by the firm Global Market Insights. And with a global computer memory shortage driving up costs of items like game consoles, smartphones and computers, used electronics may look increasingly attractive to consumers hoping to replace old hardware within their budgets.
I mostly stopped buying brand-new electronics a few years ago after realizing that the cost savings were so substantial and that the downsides were trivial. I’ve purchased used hardware including Macs, iPads and a high-end iPhone from multiple sites, including Amazon and Facebook Marketplace. The experience hasn’t been perfect — I once ended up with a pair of shoddy AirPods. But with most of my purchases, I had no regrets.
There’s a smart method to buying secondhand electronics. Here are the lessons I’ve learned.
Thoroughly Inspect the Purchase
Two years ago, I finally decided to retire my home computer, a 13-year-old iMac, and searched for another option. I concluded that Apple’s miniature desktop machine, the Mac Mini, which retailed for about $600 to $700, would be the cheapest replacement. Plenty were posted by individual sellers on Facebook Marketplace for half the price, so I decided to try my luck buying a computer there for the first time.
After messaging a few sellers, I got good vibes from John, a young hospital worker, who agreed to meet me at a cafe in San Francisco. He kindly brought a display, a keyboard and a mouse to connect with the computer to demonstrate that it worked; he even walked me through the setup process to show that the device was not locked down by a password or any corporate management software. I opened some apps and also tested the speakers and power button.
Everything checked out, and my cheap Mac Mini remains my workhorse for this column.
Avoid Buying Certain Products Used
I confess I was less thorough with a different product, a pair of refurbished AirPods labeled “like new” by Amazon for $80, about $100 less than the retail price. Months after using the product, I realized that “Find My,” a software feature used to locate the AirPods in the event that they went missing, was not working properly because the earbuds were still linked to the previous owner’s account. Fortunately, Amazon gave me a partial refund.
This experience illustrates how a good deal can sometimes lead people to make bad decisions. In hindsight, buying used earbuds — a product that has touched another person’s body — was obviously not a great idea, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Nathan Proctor, a director of U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, added other examples to the list of products to avoid: television screens that tend to be bulky and fragile, printers that wear down over time and smart watches with bands that deteriorate from other people’s sweat.
Choose a Seller Carefully
While I felt comfortable buying a low-cost computer on Facebook, I preferred buying higher-priced products like tablets and smartphones from bigger brands, which offered protections including generous return policies.
When Apple announced the iPhone 17 last September, I decided it was a good opportunity to find a deal on the previous year’s high-end iPhone, the 16 Pro. I found one on Amazon labeled “refurbished — excellent” for $800, a $300 discount from the retail price.
A few days later, the product arrived in an unremarkable brown cardboard box. While inspecting it, I noticed a light scratch down the center of the screen that was impossible to ignore.
Annoyed, I clicked a button to chat with an Amazon customer service agent. After I described the problem, Amazon agreed to deliver a replacement of the same phone the next day.
With the second iPhone, I won the lottery. It was flawless, and from checking the device’s battery history, I could see that it had been recharged only once, meaning it was probably a barely touched store return. I wouldn’t have been so lucky if I had purchased this phone online from a random seller who lacked a generous return policy.
Plenty of reputable resellers of refurbished goods, including Back Market and VIP Outlet, have good return policies, according to U.S. PIRG, which published a guide to buying used electronics.
To reduce the odds of getting a lemon, the safest bet is to buy a refurbished product directly from the big brand that manufactures it, like the way I bought my wife’s MacBook Air from Apple’s web store for refurbished goods.
Check for Longevity
To get the most value when buying used, you want the device to last. But all tech products have a finite life. Companies eventually stop giving them software updates, components such as batteries wear out and some devices are too difficult or expensive to repair when parts such as screens break.
Apple, Samsung and Google generally issue software updates for phones for up to seven years. So a simple rule of thumb when considering a used product is to look for devices made no more than two years ago. That guarantees the device still has at least five remaining years of support from the company.
As for replacing batteries and general device maintenance, France now requires companies to publish scores for their products based on the ease of disassembly and getting parts. (The iPhone 16 Pro, for example, has a rating of 8.1, on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being the easiest to repair.) Third parties like iFixit, a site that publishes instructions on repairing products, also give products such ratings.
If perusing those scores sounds like too much work, do just one thing: Before you buy any used laptop or phone, do a quick web search on the cost of a new battery and the process of replacing it, said Kyle Wiens, the chief executive of iFixit.
“That steers me toward one product or another, which can reduce some of the stress with buying something used,” he said.
