There’s never been a better time to buy a used phone

A couple years ago, just before Black Friday, I decided to replace my old, cracked Apple Watch with a non-cracked equivalent. One thing led to another, and I had spent less than I’d planned on a nicer watch than I thought I could afford. The catch: It was refurbished. 

The “r” word used to be a bad one in the gadget world. A decade ago, to many people, refurbished meant used, scuffed, and maybe a little bit broken. Secondhand devices didn’t always have the best reputation. However, as the right to repair movement has pushed consumer technology companies to make their products easier to fix, a new crop of marketplaces for used and refurbished goods has captured the attention of anyone who either loves a deal or cares about the environment, or both. And these cheaper options are better than ever.

You may have heard of Back Market, a Paris-based refurbished marketplace that promises to sell you “tech that’s better for the planet.” Then there are more specialized sites, like Gazelle, which primarily sells refurbished phones and laptops, and VIP Outlet, which specializes in refurbishing retail returns. Decluttr sells old CDs and DVDs alongside refurbished tablets and gaming consoles. Even big retailers, including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Best Buy, are in the refurbished marketplace game now, too. 

Prices and warranties vary, based on what you’re buying and when, but no matter where you shop, purchasing secondhand comes with a certain cachet. It’s the sensible thing to do, according to Lucas Gutterman, director of the Designed to Last Campaign at the US PIRG Education Fund. 

“It’s not a bad thing for people to buy new phones,” Gutterman told me. “It’s just the idea that we should buy them every year, every other year — that seems like it’s way too much for the environment.”

We certainly can’t make an infinite amount of devices with the finite number of rare earth metals on this planet. And extending the lives of phones already on the market comes with huge upside. A recent study from the French government claimed that buying a refurbished phone instead of a new one avoids the extraction of 180 pounds of raw materials and emitted 50 pounds of greenhouse gasses. Put differently, buying the refurbished device over the new one lowers the overall environmental impact by as much as 91 percent. 

Taking the refurbished route wasn’t always framed as a way to fight climate change. The practice grew out of corporate IT departments’ constant need to supply machines to employees in the early days of personal computers. If an employee left the company, rather than buy a new computer, IT wiped their machines, repaired it if needed, and then assigned it to a new employee. It didn’t take long before a cottage industry emerged to sell used but restored devices to consumers.

That industry is now huge and getting bigger every year. The number of used and refurbished smartphone shipments grew nearly 10 percent from 2022 to 2023, while the number of new smartphone shipments declined by over 3 percent, according to the market intelligence firm IDC. That adds up to the secondary market for phones being worth about $65 billion in 2023, and it’s expected to grow to nearly $110 billion by 2027. 

These big numbers reflect an industry that’s gone from mom-and-pop shops selling fixed-up laptops to multiple mainstream marketplaces where millions of people buy everything from phones and computers to watches and video game consoles. The competition between those marketplaces also means that quality and customer experience is vastly improved. Now, refurbished gadgets often come with the same long warranties, trade-in options, and payment plans as new devices. 

Plus, the latest devices tend to have fewer new features that would make upgrading worthwhile.

“People are less excited about getting another camera lens on their phone or getting a new button on the side of the iPhone,” Gutterman said. Spending less on a refurbished phone and feeling better about your environmental impact is just a better choice for a growing number of people, he explained.

The refurbished market is also more transparent than it’s ever been. It all starts with a gadget that ended up in the inventory of a refurbisher or original equipment manufacturer. Often, it’s simply a device that someone else traded in or sent back for a warranty or insurance claim. Both refurbishers and manufacturers refurbish these kinds of devices by wiping them, fixing any hardware issues, repairing any cosmetic damage, cleaning them, and boxing them back up. (This can happen several times over the lifespan of a product.)

Then the device goes on the market. Most marketplaces also give you options to buy items in different conditions, from poor to premium, at different prices. Some devices sold on the secondhand market are actually new, too. Cleland explained to me that some of the inventory that ends up in the refurbishers’ hands includes products that were sold and returned but never used. 

That’s thanks, in part, to the boom in online returns, especially since the pandemic, which has led to a liquidation market worth hundreds of billions of dollars that’s finding new homes for all kinds of secondhand goods, from furniture to construction equipment. For phones and tablets, there’s even a standardized method for grading the condition of used devices to streamline the process of reselling and refurbishing them. It all adds up to better, cheaper secondhand goods.

“It’s estimated now that anytime a new iPhone comes out, it’s going to have at least three different users over its lifespan, because it’s going to get either traded or dropped and then resold,” Sean Cleland, vice president of mobile at the marketplace B-Stock Solutions, told me. “Like, back in the day, people would just put their old phone in the drawer.”

If you zoom out, what’s happening with refurbished phones and other electronics is a shining example of what a circular economy can do. 

A circular economy aims to keep products in use as long as possible through refurbishing, repairing, and recycling to conserve resources and open up new economic opportunities. While the term has been around since the late 1980s, the circular economy concept has gained popularity in recent years. The European Union even adopted a circular economy action plan in 2020 that set forth a number of policies and strategies to promote sustainable development. These government incentives have perhaps helped marketplaces such as the Back Market to thrive in France and across Europe.

“Going circular and finding ways to reuse the old inventory to create new things, I think, is necessary,” Cleland said. “As resources dip but consumer demand increases, you’ve got to figure out a new way.”

American companies are embracing the circular economy model as well. Amazon now has Amazon Renewed, which launched in 2017 and features the same fast shipping you get with other Amazon products as well as a 90-day free return policy, which goes up to one year for some premium products. Meanwhile, eBay offers a two-year warranty on certified refurbished products, which are delivered like new, as well as one year on lower-grade used goods. Walmart Restored similarly has a one-year minimum warranty on premium refurbished goods, and 90 days on everything else. Target sells items refurbished by the original manufacturer with a six-month minimum warranty. Back Market’s warranty is good for one year across the board.

Warranty is only one factor to consider when choosing where to buy refurbished goods, says PIRG’s Gutterman. You should avoid buying refurbished items that aren’t designed to last, like Apple AirPods, as well as bulky items like TVs, which can be easily damaged. You should also make sure manufacturers still support software updates on older devices. Here’s a list of iPhone models that support the latest iOS 18 software, for instance. (You can find more tips in this recently updated guide to buying — and gifting — refurbished products that Gutterman co-authored.)

If you’re like me, you might just want to find the best deal. My Apple Watch battery is starting to fail, so I’m actually thinking about getting it repaired or getting a new one. Since the market for refurbished gadgets has blown up so much in the past few years, I have more options to upgrade than I did a few years ago. 

And as much as I’d like to try the new features, it might feel better to trade mine in, let it find its way to a new owner, and live a little longer.

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