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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

Regarding refurbs, I’ve been buying refurbished gear for years without issue, however recently have had 2 bad experiences that make me question whether it’s worth it.

The first was a an official refurb 2018 MacBook Pro which ended up having a burnt out touchbar and battery issues a year later.

The second was an official Amazon refurb kindle, which never reached even half the battery life of a new model.

This is of course anecdata (these issues could have occurred with brand new items as well), but I would love to see blackblaze style reliability data from companies who buy large numbers of refurb laptops vs new stock.

I’m curious if there’s a correlation.

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I've bought several MBP's over the years. The 2018 MPB is one of their worst models I've had ever had and still have. I've had the keyboard in-operable and repaired twice. The battery has been services twice and won't keep a charge again.

I'm honestly blown away by the latest version, but what to wait to for the hype to die down and ensure there's no Quality issues with this years model as well. But it appears they may have taken a step back and instead of pushing aesthetics this year, they looked at what its users "want/need".

Those issues would have likely occurred even on new MBP 2016-19 models, esp. on 2016.

I buy refurbished too pretty much every time, and I've had no real problems. Keyboard in 2014 MBP gave out because I dropped a Clorox wipe on it, and they replaced the whole motherboard for free (in warranty). Typing this on a refurbished 2019 16" MBP with no problems yet, though I swear typing lags every so often which I attribute to the Intel processor and some throttling.

> The first was a an official refurb 2018 MacBook Pro which ended up having a burnt out touchbar and battery issues a year later.

Why do you consider this to be a bad experience when it was clearly still under warranty and they replaced your topcase for free - brand new touchbar & battery & keyboard?

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