On March 10, 1876, a 29-year-old Scottish immigrant named Alexander Graham Bell sat in a modest laboratory at 5 Exeter Place in Boston and did something no human being had ever done: He spoke into a wire, and someone in the next room heard his voice. His exact words, recorded in his laboratory notebook: “Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you.” His assistant, a 22-year-old mechanic named Thomas Watson, came running.
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McCoy Tyner Quartet’s 1991 “New York Reunion” Album Reemerges on 2LP Pink One Step Pressed 180-gram Vinyl: Review
A 180-gram “one step” vinyl reissue of a 1991 release from noted audiophile label Chesky Records featuring jazz legends McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Al Foster is a good reason to celebrate music and life. It is a reminder of why great recordings and great players still matter.
The performances within New York Reunion are lush, relaxed and overall exemplary, capturing iconic seasoned musicians in an intimate studio setting with then state of the art recording technology. On the album cover, it states that the album was “recorded using a specially modified microphone with all tube Manley Reference electronics by David Manley from Vacuum Tube Logic Of America” It goes on to say that it was “recorded with minimalist techniques and without overdubbing or artificial enhancement to ensure the purest and most natural sound possible.”
Crafted using the increasingly popular “one step” process, which reduces the number of plating stages required to press a record and can improve overall fidelity, this reissue comes with a strong technical pedigree. The opaque pink vinyl pressing is generally quiet, well centered, and free of obvious surface issues.
This is a fine sounding all-digital recording of outstanding musicians playing together effortlessly. Perhaps too effortlessly at times. Feel wise, I’m reminded at points of those later period Oscar Peterson CDs on Telarc which at times sounded somehow too pristine and spotless for my tastes (and I say this as a pretty deep Peterson fan). Yet there are no doubt many lovely performances throughout New York Reunion such as Mr. Henderson’s extended solo sax intro (and outro) on Side 3’s “Ask Me Now” before Mr. Tyner comes in for an extended duet essentially.
Generally, I’ve enjoyed New York Reunion. My only question (not a complaint) is whether this pressing might have benefitted from some more empathetic mastering for vinyl? Don’t get me wrong, it sounds good: clean, crisp, and natural. I just wish it leaned a touch warmer. That said, considering the explicit commitment to avoiding “artificial enhancement” which would include equalization, this feels like one of those “it is what it is” scenarios.
Based on available online information, this new 2LP limited edition of 2,000 copies appears to mark the first time the complete New York Reunion album—all eight tracks originally issued on a single CD in 1992—has been released on vinyl. Earlier vinyl editions from 1992 and 2016 do exist, but those appear to have been single LP versions rather than the full 2LP presentation.
At the time of this review The McCoy Tyner Quartet’s New York Reunion can be found easily on Amazon. I have not seen any indication of whether a standard (and perhaps less pricey) black vinyl edition will be available in the future.
Where to buy: $69.98 at Amazon
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.)
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The U.S. Army said late Friday that it has signed a 10-year contract with defense tech startup Anduril. The deal could be worth up to $20 billion.
According to the announcement, the contract starts with a five-year “base period,” with the option to extend the deal for an additional five years, and it includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services.
The Army describes the agreement as a single enterprise contract consolidating what had been “more than 120 separate procurement actions for Anduril’s commercial solutions.”
“The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,” said Gabe Chiulli, the chief technology officer at the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, in a statement. “To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency,”
Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who was previously known for selling VR startup Oculus to Facebook (now Meta). Facebook fired Luckey after controversy erupted following a news report that he’d donated to a pro-Trump political group.
Luckey has repeatedly insisted that the media misrepresented his political views, but according to a recent feature in The New York Times, Luckey and Anduril have been embraced by the second Trump administration, thanks to his vision for remaking the U.S. military with autonomous fighter jets, drones, submarines, and more. The company (named, like Palantir, for a magical object in “The Lord of the Rings”) brought in around $2 billion in revenue last year, the NYT says.
Separate reports suggest that Anduril is in talks to raise a new funding round at a $60 billion valuation.
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This announcement also comes as the Department of Defense is locked in a dispute with Anthropic, with the AI company suing the DoD over its designation as a supply chain threat following a failed contract negotiation, while OpenAI has faced consumer backlash and at least one executive departure after signing a Pentagon deal of its own.
Rajesh Jha, who led Microsoft’s biggest consumer and business products as executive vice president of the Experiences + Devices group, plans to retire later this year after more than 35 years at the company.
The plan was announced internally Thursday in emails made public by Microsoft.
“When I think about the pantheon of leaders who have truly shaped this company, Rajesh stands firmly among them,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in one of the messages.
Jha, 60, said he will transition out on July 1 and stay on in an advisory role. He said that he and Nadella have been working on succession planning for some time.
As part of the transition, four executives will now report to Nadella: Perry Clarke, Microsoft 365 core infrastructure; Charles Lamanna, business and industry Copilot; Pavan Davuluri, Windows and Devices; and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky.
Jeff Teper, who leads collaboration apps including SharePoint and Teams, is being promoted to EVP, and Sumit Chauhan and Kirk Koenigsbauer are being promoted to president.
It’s the latest in a series of exits from Microsoft’s senior leadership team. Xbox chief Phil Spencer announced his retirement in February after 38 years at the company, and security leader Charlie Bell shifted from his EVP role to an individual contributor position.
The departures come as Nadella reshapes the company’s leadership structure around a broader group of direct reports, with a focus on AI and Copilot as top priorities.
Jha joined Microsoft in 1990 as a software design engineer and rose through roles overseeing Exchange, SharePoint, and the launch of Office 365 before taking charge of the broader Experiences + Devices group, which encompasses Office, Teams, Windows, Search, and devices. He joined Nadella’s senior leadership team in 2016.
In his message, Nadella praised Jha’s operational discipline and strategic judgment, saying he has been “a constant throughout my entire life at Microsoft.” Nadella said Jha embodies the commitment that helped build and transform the company.
Amazon’s weekend M5 MacBook Pro sale delivers steep discounts on multiple configurations, from the standard model for $1,399 to the upgraded 1TB spec for $1,499.
Grab the lowest prices on M5 MacBook Pro at Amazon – Image credit: Apple
Weekend MacBook Pro deals are in full swing, with the standard M5/16GB/512GB spec discounted to $1,399.99, reflecting a $200 markdown off MSRP.
Buy M5/16GB/512GB MacBook Pro for $1,399.99
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Out of 8,512 US adults surveyed in late January, more respondents expressed negative views about data centers’ effects on the environment and energy costs than positive ones. However, the largest number of respondents expect data centers to have a positive impact on jobs and tax revenue, and many remain unsure…
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That was it. Nine words, shouted through a crude device that used a vibrating wire dipped in acid water to convert sound to electricity. At the time, it worked only one way. The sound, Bell admitted, was “loud but indistinct and muffled.” And yet those nine words launched a revolution in how human beings connect with each other — one that, 150 years later, may still be one of the most underappreciated good-news stories of the modern era.
The telephone took off fast. By around 1880, there were roughly 130,000 phones in the United States; by 1900, 1.4 million; by 1910, nearly 6 million. Bell himself demonstrated the device at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, where Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil picked up the receiver and reportedly exclaimed: “My God, it talks!” (The telegraph company Western Union, less impressed, reportedly declined to buy Bell’s patent for $100,000 — a business decision that ranks alongside passing on the Beatles.)
In the US, the telephone quickly became indispensable. During the 1918 flu pandemic, New York City’s phone traffic spiked to 3.2 million calls a day as quarantined residents relied on the telephone for groceries, medical advice, and human contact. In Los Angeles, tens of thousands of students were set up to receive instruction partly by phone during school closures — arguably the first remote learning. A New York Times editorial marveled: “Less than forty years ago the telephone was an amusing toy … Now, nobody can understand how we lived without it.”
By 1946, half of American homes had a telephone. By 1970, more than 90 percent did. And as a great piece this week in the New York Times by Andrew Heisel noted, for all the disruptions it brought — scammers, prank callers, concerns about disease transmission from the mouthpiece — the telephone provoked remarkably little of the technological panic seen with similarly transformative inventions like the automobile. It was simply too useful to be scared of.
A leapfrog into the future
But for all that, the most important telephone story of the past 150 years isn’t about America at all. It’s about what happened when the telephone finally went mobile — and reached the billions of people who had been left out of the wired revolution entirely.
As of 2000, all of sub-Saharan Africa had fewer telephone lines than Manhattan. The entire region had roughly 1.6 landline connections per 100 people. South Asia was barely better. For much of the developing world at the dawn of the 21st century, Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, already more than a century old, still wasn’t a part of their reality.
Their explosive growth is one of the most extraordinary in the history of technology adoption. Sub-Saharan Africa went from about 2 mobile subscriptions per 100 people in 2000 to 89 by 2023. South Asia went from less than 1 to 84. Globally, there are now more than 9 billion mobile subscriptions — more connections than human beings on the planet. The developing world skipped past the telephone age and went straight to mobile.
A phone call out of poverty
These weren’t just phones. They were economic lifelines.
The most celebrated example is M-Pesa, a mobile money system launched by Safaricom in Kenya in 2007. M-Pesa lets users send money, pay bills, and save — all through a basic mobile phone, no bank account required.
A landmark 2016 study published in Science by economists Tavneet Suri and William Jack found that M-Pesa had been adopted by at least one person in 96 percent of Kenyan households. More remarkably, access to M-Pesa lifted an estimated 194,000 households — roughly 2 percent of the country — out of extreme poverty. The effects were strongest for female-headed households: some 185,000 women shifted from subsistence farming to business occupations. Today, mobile money platforms handle $1.68 trillion in annual transactions globally, with over 2 billion registered accounts.
Or consider Robert Jensen’s now-classic study of fishermen in the Indian state of Kerala. Before mobile phones arrived in the late 1990s, fishermen would land their catch at the nearest beach with no idea what prices looked like elsewhere. Some markets would have a glut; others, a shortage. Waste ran as high as 8 percent.
But when mobile coverage rolled out, fishermen could call ahead to check prices and choose the best market. Waste dropped to near zero. Their profits rose 8 percent. Consumer prices fell 4 percent. The phones paid for themselves within two months.
The big-picture numbers are staggering. World Bank research has estimated that moving a region from no mobile coverage to full coverage boosts GDP growth by 1.8 to 2.3 percentage points. The GSMA — the global mobile industry body — puts it this way: in 2025, mobile technologies and services generated $7.6 trillion for the global economy, equivalent to 6.4 percent of world GDP.
Mobile health programs have improved medication adherence for HIV patients in Africa. SMS reminders have boosted vaccination rates and prenatal care visits. In the developing world, the phone in your pocket can be a bank, a clinic, a classroom, and a market — sometimes all before lunch.
I can hear the objection: What about all the bad stuff? What about teen mental health and doomscrolling and the algorithmic attention trap? What about TikTok!
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation made a forceful case that the shift to a “phone-based childhood” around 2010–2015, driven by smartphones and social media, has contributed to rising rates of depression and anxiety among adolescents. The data on teen mental health is genuinely alarming — federal survey data shows that 20 percent of American 12- to 17-year-olds experienced a major depressive episode. And as Heisel wrote, the smartphone — with the internet inside and algorithms engineered for engagement — is qualitatively different from the old landline, whose cord literally kept you tethered.
The science on this is more contested than the headlines suggest, as my Vox colleague Eric Levitz wrote about in 2024, but I don’t think you need peer-reviewed studies to realize that smartphones have changed many aspects of life for the worse, especially for young people.
Still, what gets lost in the smartphone-anxiety conversation: the people who benefit most from mobile telephony — and the ones who could stand to benefit — are precisely the ones who appear least in Western coverage of the issue.
Some 885 million women in low- and middle-income countries still lack mobile internet access. Closing that gap alone would add an estimated $1.3 trillion in GDP through 2030. For a Kenyan market vendor or an Indian fisherman, a mobile phone isn’t a source of anxiety. It’s the most empowering technology they’ve ever held.
Nine words, 150 years later
Alexander Graham Bell couldn’t have imagined any of this. He reportedly wanted the standard telephone greeting to be “Ahoy!” (Thomas Edison, wisely, overruled him with “Hello.”) He couldn’t have imagined M-Pesa, or a fisherman checking sardine prices from a boat off the coast of Kerala, or a pregnant woman in rural Ghana receiving prenatal reminders by text. He definitely couldn’t have imagined TikTok.
But what Bell would have realized from the start is that his invention could destroy distance. And in just a century and a half, his invention and its successors have connected billions, lifted millions from poverty, saved lives, and created economic opportunity on a scale Bell could never have dreamed of when he shouted those nine words at Thomas Watson.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
Apple’s new MacBook Neo isn’t just the most affordable MacBook by far — it’s also the most repairable MacBook in “about fourteen years,” according to an in-depth teardown by how-to website iFixit.
The “big story,” in iFixit’s view, is the battery. While older MacBook batteries are supposedly glued into place, the Neo’s battery is held by a tray secured with 18 screws. That’s a lot of screws, but iFixit declared that “screws still beat adhesive every time.” In fact, this new arrangement — which should make it much easier to replace your MacBook battery — “sent cheers across the iFixit office.”
Other changes that reportedly make the MacBook Neo more repairable: a flat disassembly tree, the fact that Repair Assistant appears to accept replacement parts without complaint, and an easier-to-replace display and keyboard.
Ultimately, iFixit still had enough concerns — like soldered RAM and storage — that it only gave the Neo repairability score of 6 out of 10. But it said that for a MacBook, “that’s a strong score.”
Rewards programs are being offered in virtually every retail environment in existence these days, and some of those programs are far more rewarding than others. However, if you’re a contractor, tradesman, or business owner looking to maximize your return at a major home improvement outlet, the finer points of programs offered by major players like The Home Depot could prove to be make-or-break for you and your employees.
You may, however, prefer Lowe’s to The Home Depot, and you are not alone in that, as J.D. Power recently ranked it as the best home improvement retailer in the game. If you slot into that particular category, you may already be a member of the MyLowe’s Pro Rewards program. If that’s the case, you’ve likely been working hard to maximize the program’s financial benefits by racking up points for your various purchases and promptly cashing them in for members’ rewards or some of that good old MyLowe’s Money.
If not, well, you need to read the fine print of your program agreement, because those points do not stick around in your account forever. While you are taking that fine print deep dive, be sure to look beyond just the points-based deals MyLowe’s Pro is giving you, because the program offers a few other perks that make it worth your while, particularly since it is free to sign up.
You get free standard shipping and same-day delivery
Buying things online has become the preferred way for many office dwellers and work site pros to procure the goods they need from their local Lowe’s Home Improvement store. Like many retailers, Lowe’s has sought to make that process easier for any consumer who prefers to drop items into a digital cart rather than a physical one.
Of course, shipping fees can be a frustrating part of shopping for anyone. MyLowe’s Pro members might be interested to know that the big box home improvement store sweetens the shopping pot a bit by also providing them with free standard shipping and same-day delivery. There are, however, caveats to each of those deals that you’ll want to account for in your shopping. For instance, free shipping is not available for residents of Alaska, Hawaii, or certain other U.S. territories. Likewise, the deal only applies to eligible in-stock items, and you’ll need to spend at least $25 to qualify.
That $25 spend applies to the same-day delivery feature. The deal also only applies to items up to 60 pounds, with Lowe’s capping the maximum weight for the order at 300 pounds. Similarly, the purchased items can be no bigger than 48 inches x 36 inches x 21 inches. On top of that, you’ll need to place the order before 2 p.m. for same-day delivery, with Lowe’s guaranteeing the order will arrive by 8 p.m. Additional delivery fees may still be applied for hazardous materials.
Access to upgraded purchasing options
Free shipping and same-day delivery might be enough to inspire a professional in need to spend extra on some Lowe’s exclusive brands and other worksite materials. The program also offers a couple of other intriguing purchasing upgrades that could tempt worksite pros who can’t always get away from a job to buy or even pick up items they need at the nearest Lowe’s.
If you’ve even casually considered signing up for a MyLowe’s Pro Rewards account, you likely already know you will receive an attractive volume discount on large materials orders. You may not, however, know that you don’t need to be present to pick those orders up, with the program allowing you to designate trusted crew members to do that for you. Designated crew members can even make purchases for you when the need arises, and if you’re using the MyLowe’s Pro app, there’s an easy-to-use Scan to Pay feature they can use when picking the order up.
As far as procuring materials you need for a job, your MyLowe’s Pro account grants you access to the retailer’s order quoting feature, which can be used online, in-store, or through the app. That feature lets you create and edit an order via the Pro Desk assistant anywhere, including from the job site itself. On top of those purchasing features, MyLowe’s Pro includes access to its Pro Business Solutions, which can help you analyze your spending habits by tracking your purchases and calculating your savings year over year.
You may also get a solid discount on paints
Savings don’t end with exclusive members’ deals, redeemable points, and volume discounts on work materials. Depending on what sort of work you do, the paint discount you get with a MyLowe’s Pro Rewards membership could be enough to seal the membership deal.
For the record, that discount is a whopping 20%. While that number might be an eye-opener for those in the house painting and interior design fields, you’ve no doubt already guessed that the discount comes with a string or two attached. First and foremost, the 20% price reduction only applies to new cans of paint. As such, it actively excludes any spray paints or so-called “mistints,” which are paints that were mixed incorrectly, resulting in an inaccurate color.
Moreover, it’s worth noting that this feature also comes with an annual spend restriction, with the 20% discount not kicking in unless you spend $3,000 annually. Per Lowe’s, the discount applies to future qualifying paint purchases and “eligibility for subsequent program periods will be determined by the previous year’s annual qualifying spend.” You’ll also want to keep close tabs on the calendar when it comes to qualifying for your paint discount, as the spend tracking resets at the first of the year. Despite those caveats, if painting is a big part of your everyday workflow, saving 20% on your purchase is the kind of deal that may be hard to ignore.
Ask Maps lets users query the world in natural language. Immersive Navigation rebuilds directions in 3D. Together, they mark the most significant overhaul of Google Maps since Street View.
The question Google is now asking its users to ask Maps is: “My phone is dying, where can I charge it without a long wait for coffee?” That a navigation app can handle that query, and actually answer it well, marks a meaningful shift in what digital cartography can do.
Google announced Ask Maps, a conversational AI feature powered by Gemini, alongside a redesigned Immersive Navigation experience that brings photorealistic 3D rendering to turn-by-turn directions. The combination represents what Google is calling its most significant Maps update in over a decade, though it is careful not to say so directly.
Ask Maps works by allowing users to pose complex, contextual queries rather than searching for a specific place or category. “Is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight?” is the example Google offers in a blog post published March 12.
The system draws on personalisation signals, including a user’s saved places and past searches, to weight its answers, so a user who has previously sought out vegan restaurants will find vegan-friendly options surfaced without having to specify.
The feature is rolling out now in the US and India on Android and iOS, with a desktop version to follow. Google has not given a timeline for wider international expansion.
The 3D rebuild
Immersive Navigation, the second major component of the update, replaces the current flat-map navigation overlay with a 3D view that incorporates nearby buildings, overpasses, and terrain. Lane markings, traffic lights, crosswalks, and stop signs are rendered as visual cues rather than text instructions.
Voice guidance has been updated to use landmark-based phrasing, “Go past this exit and take the next one for Illinois 43 South”, rather than distance-based prompts.
The redesign brings Google Maps closer to Apple Maps’ long-standing visual approach, which introduced detailed 3D city rendering several years ago. That Google is only now deploying comparable depth in navigation, rather than its existing Immersive View, which was a separate, non-navigation mode, reflects both the computational cost of real-time 3D rendering on mobile devices and the time it takes to build the underlying map data at sufficient resolution.
The competitive context
Ask Maps is Google’s most direct integration of its Gemini AI into a product used by more than a billion people monthly. Until now, Gemini’s presence in Maps has been limited to AI-powered summaries of places and reviews. Ask Maps extends that to full conversational navigation, putting Google in more direct competition with AI-native tools like Perplexity, which has built search-style answers to location-based queries into its products.
The update also arrives at a moment when Apple is deepening its own Maps intelligence, and when OpenAI has been exploring location-aware features in ChatGPT. For Google, which generates a significant portion of its advertising revenue from local search queries, keeping Maps as the dominant interface for spatial intent matters enormously. Ask Maps is the company’s clearest signal yet that it intends to defend that ground.
Whether users will actually talk to their maps, or default to the familiar search box, is the open question. Google has introduced conversational search features before, and adoption has often been slower than product announcements suggest.
But the infrastructure is now in place. The next question is the one users will actually ask.
The AI company he founded three years ago has lost six co-founders, is slashing staff, and trails badly in coding benchmarks. Musk’s remedy: rebuild from scratch, for the second time.
In March 2023, Elon Musk launched xAI with 12 co-founders and a stated ambition to build “the most powerful AI in the world.” Three years later, 10 of those founders have gone.
The company is cutting staff. Its flagship chatbot Grok is acknowledged, by Musk himself, to lag behind its main competitors. And for at least the second time, Musk has declared that xAI must be rebuilt from the foundations.
“It was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” Musk said this week, less than six weeks after completing a $1.25 trillion merger between xAI and SpaceX.
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The comment came as reporting from the Financial Times and CNBC confirmed a wave of departures among xAI’s senior engineering staff, with Tesla and SpaceX executives reportedly sent in to audit teams and identify underperformers.
The most recent exits, researcher Zihang Dai and engineer Guodong Zhang, follow the February departure of Jimmy Ba, one of the company’s highest-profile AI researchers. The cumulative loss, described by insiders as a combination of burnout and Musk’s management style, has left morale at the company in poor shape, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.
The coding problem
The immediate catalyst for this latest round of disruption appears to be Grok’s performance on coding tasks. Musk said at a conference this week that “Grok is currently behind in coding”, a candid admission given that AI-assisted software development has emerged as perhaps the most commercially valuable near-term application of large language models.
Grok trails Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex in coding benchmarks, according to xAI staffers cited in FT reporting. The gap has become a source of internal frustration: engineers who joined xAI expecting to be at the frontier instead find themselves chasing a moving target set by competitors with more data, more investment, and fewer departures.
In an attempt to close the gap, xAI announced hires from Cursor, the AI-powered coding environment that has built a devoted following among developers. Whether transplanting talent from one company to another can resolve what appear to be deeper structural and cultural problems at xAI is, at minimum, unclear.
A $1.25 trillion question
The timing is delicate. The SpaceX-xAI merger, valued at $1.25 trillion, was framed in part as a way to stabilise xAI’s ambitions by giving it access to SpaceX’s capital, compute infrastructure, and engineering discipline. Tesla also invested $2 billion in xAI earlier this year. Both investments now look more complicated against the backdrop of an acknowledged rebuild and a continuing talent crisis.
xAI has also been under regulatory scrutiny in multiple countries after its Grok image generator was found to produce non-consensual intimate imagery with minimal safeguards. The company has addressed some of those concerns, but the reputational damage has complicated its pitch to enterprise customers who might otherwise have been considering Grok as an alternative to OpenAI or Anthropic products.
Musk’s companies have been rebuilt before. Tesla was months from insolvency when it launched the Model 3. SpaceX famously had three rocket failures before its fourth mission succeeded. Whether the pattern holds for an AI lab in an era where the competitive landscape shifts every few months is the question hanging over xAI’s third act.
You can save money and help save the planet by buying used or refurbished electronics instead of new devices. Since most of the environmental impact of devices comes from the manufacturing phase, buying secondhand gear can reduce your carbon footprint. Do it right, and buying refurbished can feel much like buying new. This guide delves into what you need to know about refurbished terminology, offers tips on what to look for to snag yourself the best deals, and lists some of the best places to buy refurbished gadgets and used electronics.
You may also be interested in How to Buy Ethical and Eco-Friendly Electronics, The Best Used Tech to Buy and Sell, What to Think About Before Buying a Used Smartphone, and How to Responsibly Dispose of Your Electronics.
Updated March 2026: I’ve added some tips for buying, new links to refurbished sellers, and advice on what to do after you buy.
Table of Contents
What Does Refurbished Mean?
There is no legal definition of refurbished. Some sellers prefer used, pre-loved, secondhand, reconditioned—the list continues. Refurbishment implies that the seller has tested the device and may have repaired and cleaned it, but the only way to be sure is to read the fine print and understand what the seller means by whatever term is used.
If you’re lucky, you may get an open-box device, which a buyer has opened but never actually used. Sellers are not legally allowed to resell returned devices as new, and it’s common for all returns to end up sold in the same place. At the other end of the scale, you may end up with a device that looks like it has survived the apocalypse and doesn’t work.
Tips for Buying Refurbished
I’ll recommend a few good places to buy refurbished electronics below, but first, let’s explore what you should look for in a seller and what you need to do to protect yourself when you buy.
While buying older electronics is often a great way to save money, there are a few things to keep in mind. It may make more sense to buy a discounted flagship phone from a couple of years ago than a brand-new budget phone, for example, but there are also some potential cons. Always consider software updates and ask:
- How many more years of software updates will the product receive?
- How long will it continue to get security updates?
- What version of the software does it come with?
- How easy is it to update the software?
Aside from working out what the seller means by refurbished, you should read the listing for any potential purchase very carefully and try to answer questions such as these:
- Has it been tested, and does everything work?
- Does it have a new battery or a guarantee about battery health? (This is crucial for old phones and laptops.)
- Has it been wiped if a previous user set it up?
- Is there any cosmetic damage like scratches or cracks? (Look for a transparent grading system.)
- What is included? (Does it come with chargers, cables, manuals, and original packaging?)
- Is there any warranty offered? (The longer the better.)
- If there is a problem, how do returns work? Do you have to pay, and what is the return window?
If you’re uncertain about anything, it’s worth asking before you buy to avoid disappointment.
Photograph: Simon Hill
There are protections for purchases, such as Section 170 of the Fair Credit Billing Act in the US or Section 75 in the UK. But you should use a credit card for purchases to get the best charge-back protection and avoid going through a third-party payment service, such as PayPal. Some banks and credit card companies are better than others, so it’s worth researching their reputations and the protections they offer.
If you can inspect and test devices before you buy, do it. Otherwise, you should closely examine and thoroughly test any device you buy immediately when you receive it. Remember that there is a limited window to report any faults or issues with the condition and return an item. Always keep the box and packaging it arrived in at least until you are satisfied that you won’t need to return it.
You’ve done your initial tests and decided that you are keeping the refurbished device you bought, but there are still a couple of things you might consider doing before you start using it.
Best Places to Buy Refurbished Electronics
Photograph: Simon Hill
You have an enormous choice when buying refurbished electronics, so let’s break down your options.
We have had some good experiences buying refurbished devices from their original manufacturers, which makes sense since they know precisely how to test and repair their own devices. All of these manufacturers certify the refurbished devices they sell, and most offer at least a one-year warranty, but the savings vary; for example, Apple offers up to 15 percent off, while Dell offers up to 50 percent off.
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