Newegg's unveils 'Refreshed' refurb program — claims you'll actually get good quality

News
By
published

The GPU trade-in program is a part of Newegg's new effort.

An egg taped together.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Newegg is getting further into refurbished tech with its Newegg Refreshed program, which offers products refurbished by the retailer itself and acts as a trade-in mechanism for PC components. Many popular products, like graphics cards, PCs, and Apple devices will be offered and traded through Newegg Refreshed. The program is ostensibly to offer customers better and more environmentally-friendly deals, but it also appears to be a step towards righting the company's fuzzy record on used products.

Newegg already sells refurbished hardware on its website, but this hardware is sold by third parties not necessarily affiliated with Newegg. Newegg Refreshed advertises itself as more reliable and guarantees that "all essential accessories" get included. There's also a 90-day window to return a Newegg Refreshed product for either a refund or a replacement.

In many ways, Newegg Refreshed builds on top of the graphics card trade-in program the company launched a few months ago, which is now a part of Newegg Refresh. You can already find products on Newegg with the Newegg Refreshed sticker attached, though stock seems to be very mixed. There's plenty of Apple devices to buy right now, but only a handful of AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Other internal PC components aren't even part of Newegg Refreshed, which even has robot vacuums instead of other key computer parts like CPUs.

One feature that doesn't seem to be active at the moment is trade-in for other PC components. Newegg's press release doesn't really go into detail on what it will and won't accept for trade-in, stating only that Newegg Refreshed "enables customers to trade in unwanted PC hardware."

While Newegg's publicly stated motivations to get more involved with refurbished products are to give its customers better deals and go green, it's also quite possible that this is an attempt to reform the company's business around used hardware. Newegg landed itself in very hot water back in 2022 when it refused to give Gamers Nexus a refund for a used motherboard on the grounds that it was damaged. The problem was that Gamers Nexus hadn't even opened it yet, and it became clear that the board was a refurbished unit that Newegg neglected to actually fix.

The saga culminated in Newegg changing some of its policies surrounding returns for used CPUs and motherboards. That Newegg's refurbishment program offers 90 days for refunds and replacements is a significant change considering the company hasn't even always offered refunds for brand-new hardware.

Matthew Connatser
Matthew Connatser

Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • atomicWAR
    While it sounds like a great idea, my experiences with Newegg in the last couple years has left me more than a little hesitant to trust in their ability to actually follow through with good consumer support. They are at least five years away from rebuilding the trust lost with me personally and with what Steve Burke of Gamer's Nexus covered last year in their experience (and others) with Newegg CS (here, here, and here)...I am left more than a little reluctant to trust Newegg to get this right.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Nothing says "Trust our quality!" than saying "It'll work for 90 days, after which you're on your own".
    Reply
  • Gururu
    I guess the price will be everything, although the more resources they put to test parts will drive the price up.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Nothing says "Trust our quality!" than saying "It'll work for 90 days, after which you're on your own".
    At least that's better than the standard 3rd party 'refurbisher'.
    30 days, and you're out.
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    Will they rename that section to “used egg”? I’m just asking questions.
    Reply
  • Notton
    The first 90 days is usually enough time to weed out the lemons.
    If the product doesn't fail within that time, it usually will live for the next 3~10 years, or longer, depending on what it is.

    Anecdotally, a lemon Mobo, GPU, RAM, or SSD will die within the first 30 days, if it was not DOA. A majority of lemon parts will give the ghost within 10 days, if you stress test them. If the part survives 24hrs of stress testing, it'll be fine for at least 3yrs.
    The most unreliable parts are usually RAM sticks, or Mobo RAM slots, followed by GPU.

    With that said, I would avoid refurbs of anything with a screen on it.
    That would be laptops, monitors, phones, and tablets. Usually they have a dead pixel, a scratch, or some other issue with the screen to get returned/replaced. The QC staff don't get paid enough to do a good and thorough job of checking the screen.
    The only exception is if you can see it working in person, or it was a shop window display item.
    Reply