Why Buying Refurbished From Apple Is a Good Idea

Buying a refurbished product is typically hit or miss. What one company considers to be refurbished may arrive at your home looking like it just passed through a war zone. What may seem like a decent way to save a few pounds on a product you have to have can quickly turn into an absolute nightmare. When it comes to Apple, however, they don’t just make buying refurbished sound like a good idea. It may actually be a better idea than buying a product brand new and off the shelf.

For starters, all refurbished Apple products have the same warranty that you would get if you bought the product new. This means that all of the normal forms of damage, wear and tear are completely covered for the duration of the warranty. There is no separate “refurbished” warranty that excludes types of damage that these products are likely to have. As far as Apple is concerned, customers who purchased a product refurbished are no different from ones who stood in line and waited for hours to buy the same thing brand new.

Secondly, Apple gives all refurbished products an interior overhaul. This includes installing a new battery in the device. One downside to the lithium ion batteries that Apple uses in their products is that their overall capacity degrades over time. This means that a two-year old product will get less use time out of a full charge than one that is brand new. To combat this, Apple installs brand new batteries in all of their refurbished products.

The exterior of your Apple device is also completely replaced. Any screen scratches or case damage that was the result of carelessness by the previous owner are completely taken care of with new hardware. This means it’s physically impossible to tell the difference, quality wise, between a refurbished Apple product and a brand new one if you were to set the two side by side.

Because a product is still refurbished and isn’t quite new, Apple reduces the price on refurbished products by £50 or more depending on the model. The only downside is that because of Apple’s care and attention to detail, refurbished products tend to get snatched up pretty quickly. You might have to wait and keep a constant watch on Apple’s website for that new iPhone or iPad to come in as a refurbished product, but the wait will pay for itself in the money you save.

It’s also important that this refurbished plan is only applicable when buying hardware like the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad (as well as Macbook computers) through Apple and their Apple.com distribution store. If you buy your products at any other electronics retailer their refurbished policies and the qualities of those policies might be different depending on the location.