What you should know before buying refurbished gadgets
Gadgets get a second life when you buy refurbished. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Most people know that buying a refurbished tech product will save you money compared to buying it new. It also gives a device a second life instead of sending it off to be recycled. Not only that, buying refurbished is sometimes a clever workaround for finding new or tough-to-find products at a lower price. If you’re gifting tech for the holidays, a birthday, or buying for yourself, it’s not a bad idea to see what kinds of stuff you can find refurbished across the web.
Those are all good things — yet “refurbished†is still a loaded word for a lot of people. New means new, a product that nobody else has used. On the other hand, buying something refurbished can be a gamble, despite the fact that the product is probably significantly more affordable.
If something has been refurbished, that could mean the product was either broken or roughed up enough to warrant a repair. It could also mean that whoever bought it simply decided they didn’t want it and returned it to the store. The definition of what makes for a refurbished product varies depending on the seller, though something that may ease some worry is that there are US laws that prevent once-used tech from being sol …