Things You Need to Consider before Buying a Used Laptop

If you are thinking of buying a used laptop, you are at the right place what you need to consider before these second hand used laptops. Also we will explain to you where these laptops come from and what you should look at carefully before buying them.

Origin of Used Laptops

Second-hand laptops can come from various sources, the most common being excess stock in warehouses or from exhibitions.

Sometimes, these used systems come from the reconditioning of equipment that would have suffered a failure.

See Also: What is Refurbished Laptop

Let’s detail a little more:

1. Surplus stock

Manufacturers must have a certain surplus of portable systems in case the user requests the repair of his equipment.

Many laptop manufacturers, if the repair goes beyond changing the hard drive or RAM, usually send a new system. This allows them to save a lot of time and money on repair.

Something that implies that the manufacturer of the laptops has an excess of stock and over time they decide to liquidate it at very low prices. They are not bad products, but they are very old products.

2. Exhibition

Many times the laptops that have been on display in the store, as they have been quite tampered with, are sold second-hand at great discounts.

See Also: How to Repair the Laptop: Problems with Solutions

Actually, these systems do not have any problem, since they have hardly been used, although they have been on for a long time. They tend to have fairly new hardware, so they can be a good option.

3. Refurbished

These are usually quite new laptops that have suffered a hardware problem. The user in this case has received a new laptop and it has been sent for repair to be put on the market again.

They are usually very well reviewed and the problem duly corrected, so it’s a pretty reliable laptop. They have state-of-the-art hardware (or close to it) and usually offer a 10% discount on the non-refurbished model.

Things You Need to Consider before Buying a Used Laptop

We are now going to explain what you should take into account when buying a used laptop. We are going to focus, mainly, on second-hand laptops from manufacturer stock remnants.

Refurbished or expo laptops are usually quite modern and no more of a mystery. Let’s go with what you should keep in mind when buying a laptop from excess stock.

1. Processor Age

The first thing we need to know is the processor used by the laptop in question. We can easily find used laptops with 5th Generation and 6th Generation Intel processors.

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These processors are not really bad, the problem is that they may have fewer cores and frequency than newer processors.

They are also usually less energy efficient and tend to be somewhat hotter. Regarding AMD processors, they are usually processors prior to the Ryzen family, so they will have limited frequencies, low number of cores and will be quite energy inefficient.

We understand that you are not an expert in Intel and AMD processors, but you can search for the processor model on the internet.

The good thing about Intel is that it has a page called “ARK” where you can find all the specifications of the processor, including the year of manufacture of the processor.

2. Graphics Card

Possibly if we choose a used laptop, we will surely use it for work, training or navigation, among other more or less light tasks.

Used laptops usually have graphics cards from several generations back, possibly NVIGIA GTX 700 Mobile and AMD RX 400 Series models.

See Also: How Long does a Graphics Card Last

Although being a little ignorant and playing a few games can always be fine. We will be able to do it and there are many games that do not require a lot of graphic power to play and have fun for a while.

The age of the processors is more or less the same, but in the graphics card segment things are very different.

Not only because of the new technologies, but also the number of games that we can run, the resolution and other aspects

We can run casual games for eSports like Fortnite, Counter Strike: Global Offensive and other similar games. What will be more expensive is running more modern games that require more graphics power.

These older graphics cards obviously won’t support newer technologies like NVIDIA Ray Tracing and DLSS, as well as AMD FidelityFX.

Although all these technologies may not be relevant in many cases, they can be interesting, especially the technologies that allow you to obtain more FPS in games.

3. Resolution

This is a very important factor that we must take into account. The minimum resolution on a laptop today is 1080p, as it is the minimum resolution for everything today.

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The problem with an “old” laptop lies in the resolution, since in most cases they offer lower resolutions than what we can consider the minimum today.

Without a doubt, it is advisable to opt for a computer that has a 1080p resolution and nothing below it.

4. RAM Memory

The amount of laptop RAM is very important and we must choose with current and future needs in mind.

Currently it is not recommended that a laptop have less than 8GB of RAM, as it will be very noticeable in daily tasks.

At least 8GB of RAM has been established for office tasks, navigation, training and the like. Perhaps a laptop with 16GB of RAM would be more interesting, but it is very difficult (at the moment) to find second-hand laptops with that much RAM.

Another aspect that we must take into account about RAM memory is its standard. The vast majority of used laptops are based on older Intel processors with DDR3 RAM.

See Also: What is eMMC Flash Memory?

This is a bit of a problem, since the performance of DDR4 RAM is superior to DDR3 RAM, mainly because of the operating frequencies.

If we find a good offer with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, we will always have better performance than with the same amount of DDR3 RAM.

5. Storage drive type

If you have tried acorn-fed ham, when we eat supermarket tray ham again, we notice a lot of difference.

The same goes for storage, the difference between mechanical hard drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD) is night and day.

We will see a huge difference in the loading times of the operating system and the different applications that we launch.

SSD drives offer 6-10 times faster read and write speeds than HDD drives. Not only this, SSDs are more efficient, lighter and more durable than mechanical hard drives.

For all these factors, whenever we can, it is better to choose a laptop that includes an SSD drive, since we will notice it a lot.

See Also: How to remove the Hard Drive from a Laptop

If not, changing the hard drive is quite simple and we can find quite cheap SSD drives on the market.

6. Laptop Connectivity

One of the critical points of a laptop (or desktop) is the connectivity they offer. The minimum that we can demand from a used laptop is that it has a USB 3.0 port, to obtain better performance.

It would be interesting if the laptop included at least one HDMI port, an RJ45 connector and 802.11b/g/n WiFi connectivity.

It is practically impossible to find a used laptop with USB 3.1 ports, USB-C ports or 802.11ac WiFi, or better.

These interfaces and connection technologies are quite new and in “old” laptops with about 5 years or more, they are impossible to find. It could be the case of finding a used laptop that includes them, but for now, it will be complicated.

7. Keyboard Language

Something quite common in occasional laptops is that they do not have the keyboard in USA.

Usually these bargain laptops have the English keyboard layout as it is the “standard” within the industry.

Some sellers bet on putting stickers on the keys to “reconvert” the keyboard from the English layout to the Castilian layout.

Note that the seller is obliged to indicate that they have put stickers on the keys to adapt it to our language.

8. Laptop Weight

Over time, laptops have become more compact and lighter. This has been possible by developing increasingly efficient hardware, both in terms of energy and cooling.

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In addition, technologies such as M.2 format SSDs or soldering the SSD and RAM on the motherboard have caused the size and weight to be reduced.

This is practically impossible to find in “older” laptops, as they are based on less efficient hardware.

Conclusion

Buying a laptop can be a tedious job, looking for a system that meets our expectations and has a good price.

The process of purchasing a used laptop can be more tedious, since there are many factors that we must take into account.

They are a very good solution, since we can have a good laptop for a very low cost and that is suitable for office automation, training and others.

The most critical points to take into account in a laptop are the graphics card it integrates, the amount of RAM, the storage unit and the resolution.

These are, without a doubt, the most critical points and to which we must pay more attention. If we find something that meets in terms of resolution, in terms of RAM and has an SSD and we see it at a sweet price, we better jump headlong for it.

Having the keyboard in English is not a problem, since we can buy a kit of stickers on the internet and thus “solve” the layout problem.

Has this guide helped you to buy a used laptop?