I bought a refurbished pixel 2 earlier this year. My pixel 4a got damaged and I decided I was gonna try a refurbished phone. Reasons were: I wanted to spend less money on phones, I wanted a ‘small’ android phone, and I was already familiar with the pixel 2 since my friend used to have one.

I knew what the phone looked like but I still had to get used to this phone’s massive chin and forehead! It’s also my first phone without a headphone jack, so I had to figure out how to connect it to my car’s sound system with a Bluetooth receiver. O was already using wireless earbuds so that was no hassle. All in all the transition was pretty painless, so I’m not gonna look for a 3.5mm jack in my next phone.

I bought it for about 120€, which is 50% of the price for a new pixel 2 64GB at this moment. I’m pretty clumsy and always keep my phone on me, even during my job which is pretty physical at times, so my phones don’t tend to last past 2 years. That feels pretty wasteful when I say (type) it out loud so I think I’m gonna stick to refurbished phones. Maybe I’ll follow the release of pixel phones, only with a 4-5 year delay 😁.

One big downside of refurbished phones is that apparently they don’t always replace the battery! They test them and decide per phone if it’s necessary or not. Apparently I got pretty unlucky because my battery wasn’t amazing to start with and degraded pretty fast. I might have to learn how to do the replacement myself, that’s always been something on my list.

If you’re considering buying a refurbished phone to save money or to be less wasteful, I can recommend it, but keep your eye on the battery and check if the warranty covers it.