It turns out that buying a certified “good” refurbished phone is a bit of a crapshoot, because each company has a different definition of what is considered “good.” Although we paid less, about $20, than we would have for a certified “excellent” phone, it wasn’t enough savings to be worth the considerable trade-offs.
Of the four refurbished-phone resellers, Plug offered the best experience by far. Plug, an online marketplace for refurbished technology, sells phones, smartwatches, tablets, laptops, and headphones. It claims to inspect 90-plus points, such as the battery health, camera performance, and screen quality, including dead pixels. We purchased a $300 (plus tax) iPhone 13 in “good” condition, but to our surprise we received a phone that we’d consider excellent. It had no obvious visible damage, just some light scuffing around the camera lenses, but was otherwise nearly pristine. Other marketplaces sent phones with considerably more wear, especially around the camera lenses. The iPhone 13 we bought from Plug also had a battery health of 98%, which is excellent for a used phone. In addition, our phone had a screen protector preinstalled, which we hadn’t expected, since Plug advertises preinstalled screen protectors only as part of its additional accessory kit. The Plug phone was also the only one updated to the latest version of iOS 18; the others were still running iOS 17.
Plug provided the best packaging of the refurbished-phone sellers, tossing some accessories into the box that we didn’t expect, which made the experience feel like opening up a new product. Plug shipped the phone with three chargers, a clear phone case, and an adhesive phone grip (like a knockoff PopSocket). The phone was also well protected, shipped in a smaller box inside the accessory box; some other phones we received were stuffed in a small box in a flat mailer, so this is a clear win for Plug.
After seeing all these additional accessories, we reached out to Plug to confirm that somebody at the company hadn’t deduced it was for a member of the press and added some extras. The company denied any special treatment, but when we compared our unboxing against others online, we noticed that we had received more accessories in our package than others usually do, plus the preinstalled screen protector. We’d say, though, that you can expect a phone case, a phone grip, or some equivalent freebie, rather than a full set of accessories.
“Good” phones from the other refurbished-electronics resellers weren’t as, well, good. The iPhone 13 we purchased from Gazelle, which has been selling refurbished electronics since 2008, was extremely dirty. Gazelle claims to have a 55-point inspection process for phone refurbishment, but we found crud from the previous owner caked in the bottom speakers, earpiece, and ring/silent switch on the left side of the phone.
And though the phone came well packed in a simple cardboard box, accompanied by a charger and cable, its battery health was slightly disappointing at 86%. Considering that a new battery for an iPhone 13 costs about $90, you might as well buy a newer device — or one in better condition.
Back Market, another refurbished marketplace, is on a marketing blitz, trying to make buying used tech look as cool as buying new. But the iPhone 13 we purchased, while in good exterior shape, held a few surprises once we booted it up: The battery health was 84%, again on the verge of needing replacement, and more egregiously, it had an unauthorized third-party screen installed, which caused an error to pop up in the Settings menu.
We thought we would have better luck with Swappa, which is a marketplace for independent phone-repair shops and tech resellers. Instead of buying a refurbished phone from Swappa itself, you buy one from the business that uses Swappa to sell its refurbished electronics. Swappa makes all of this pretty clear on its website, and when you’re searching for phones, you can choose sellers and see photos of the actual phone you’re buying.
But because there is no standardized refurbishing process, you don’t really know what you’re going to get, even though you can see photos of the device before you buy. The iPhone 13 we bought arrived in packaging that smelled a lot like cigarette smoke. The phone was also a bit more beat up than we thought it would be, and we discovered that properly determining a phone’s condition by looking at a few pictures is a bit more difficult than you might think. When we booted it up, we discovered that the seller had already done the setup process, which refurbishers typically leave for the buyer after resetting the phone for personalization and security. At least the battery health was 89%, which wouldn’t require immediate replacement.
Though this is a peek into the refurbished-phone market, we haven’t tested the sellers nearly enough to make a full recommendation. We limited our test by ordering only one phone from each website, and if we had ordered on a different day, we likely would have gotten an entirely different set of phones, and reached different conclusions about the quality of each. Limitations aside, our experiment represents a good snapshot of the buying experience and what you can reasonably expect from each site.
