Buying, condition and disposal
Ten things to check on a used laptop before you buy
Cosmetic condition is what you see first and what matters least. What decides the purchase is the real state of the battery, whether the drive has had a hard life, whether every port works, and whether the machine can come along to a supported operating system.
Used equipment is a good deal when you know what you are getting. This list is the same one we go through before anything is passed on — and you can do most of it while the seller is standing next to you.
What you can see in ten minutes
Pick the machine up and work through the list in order. Each point takes under a minute.
- Battery health. In Windows: open Command Prompt and type powercfg /batteryreport. The report shows the original capacity against the current one. Below 70 percent means a new battery is coming.
- The screen on a white and then a black background. Dead pixels show on white; backlight bleed and burn-in show on black.
- Every single key. Open a blank document and press through all of them. One dead key is cheap to live with, but it belongs in the price.
- Every port, with something in it. Bring a USB stick and an HDMI cable. Ports that were never tested are the most common unpleasant surprise.
- Disk health. CrystalDiskInfo reads the SMART data and tells you how long the disk has run and whether it is reporting errors.
- The fan under load. Open a handful of tabs and listen. A scraping sound is a bearing on its way out.
- Camera, microphone and speakers. Start a call with yourself in any app.
- The hinges. Open and close the screen slowly. Creaking or play ends up cracking the chassis.
- BIOS password and device locks. Restart and enter the BIOS. A machine locked by a previous owner cannot always be unlocked — not by us either.
- The Windows licence. Under Settings, System, Activation it should say that Windows is activated.
Ask two questions
Is the power supply included? And why is the machine being sold? The first is a real cost if the answer is no. The second rarely gets you a false answer if you ask straight out.
What a letter does not tell you
Sellers often write grade A or B. There is no shared standard for what the letters mean — two sellers can call the same machine different things. Ask for the condition described in words.
If you would rather have it done
If the machine is for a company, we do that check for you and write down the result before you pay. That is the whole difference between buying used and guessing.
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Questions we get about this
How do I check the battery condition on a used laptop?
Open the Command Prompt in Windows and type powercfg /batteryreport. The report shows the original capacity against the current one. Under 70 per cent means a new battery is on the way.
What should I check before buying a used laptop?
The battery condition, the screen on both a white and a black background, every single key, all the ports with something in them, the drive's SMART data, the fan under load, camera and microphone and speakers, the hinges, BIOS password and device locks, that Windows is activated, and whether the power supply is included. Each point takes under a minute.
What do grade A and grade B mean?
Nothing fixed. There is no common standard for what the letters mean, and two sellers can call the same machine different things. Ask for the condition described in words.
Why does the BIOS password matter on a used machine?
Because a machine still locked by a previous owner cannot always be unlocked — not even by us. Restart and go into the BIOS before you buy.
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- Windows 11 on an older machine: what does it take?Why a working machine is suddenly not allowed to update — and what the options are.
- How to erase data before selling or scrapping a computerFormatting is not erasing. The difference gets expensive if it is a company machine.
Let us find the right solution for you
Tell us about your situation and we will come back with a concrete proposal — no obligation and no sales pitch.
The people you will be talking to
Ismail Masoumabadi
Network Security & International Sales Management
Mehdi
Sales Advisory & Head of Marketing and Sales