The straight answer is no.
Whenever you’re dealing with electronics, buying refurbished items incur in serious risks. Not only you won’t be saving a substantial amount of money, but chance are you are getting a product that didn’t work well in the first place.
Let me try to give you an advice that is as practical as possible: only buy refurbished products if you’re willing to lose the money that you spent on it.
For example, let’s suppose that an Apple Pencil costs $100 and you find a refurbished one for only 10 dollars. Then it’s reasonable to make the purchase as long as you test the product in advance.
The only reason why it’s OK to buy a refurbished item in the example above is because losing 10 dollars will not cause you any distress. If the Apple Pencil works for 2 weeks and then suddenly stops functioning, you won’t have lost much.
Now if the same Apple Pencil costs $100, but you decide to pay $75 for a refurbished one, this would be a terrible idea. The chances of coming across technical problems with refurbished products are substantially higher than with brand-new items.
Now you have to ask yourself: would you like to take such a risk in order to save 25 dollars?
Of course not! It’s simply not worth it.
An Apple Pencil is not expensive
Another aspect worth considering is that Apple Pencils are not at all expensive. They’re not incredibly cheap either, but if you have the money to buy a refurbished one, you can surely save up a little bit more to buy a brand-new one.
Before even considering wasting your money on a refurbished product, make sure to check how much the Apple Pencil costs on Amazon. You will see that it’s indeed quite affordable.
(Click the image below to see the Apple Pencil on Amazon)
When is it advisable to buy refurbished electronics?
If you have the money to buy a new one, you should never buy refurbished products.
I usually say that the only good reason to buy a refurbished drawing tablet or even a laptop is an emergency situation.
Let me give you a clear example that I came across only a couple of days ago.
I decided to go back to college to take some programming classes. Even though I’m a designer, I have a background in programming and I like to keep my skills as sharp as possible.
As soon as I entered the classroom, the professor told all of us that we would need a laptop with at the very least 8 Gb of RAM.
Since my laptop is slightly old and was too dated to be used in class, I was forced to buy another one. Now, I’m sure you have noticed that drawing tablets are not necessarily dirt cheap, but they are nowhere near as expensive as powerful laptops.
Since I’m only taking these classes to get some more programming practice, I did not want to invest a lot of money buying a new laptop (mine is already good enough for me). That’s why I decided to buy a refurbished one!
Do you see the logic behind it?
It was an emergency, I needed a certain kind of computer, I had to get it fast and the price between a new laptop and a refurbished one was humongous.
The bottom line is: I have saved a substantial amount of money by purchasing the refurbished laptop and I don’t mind if it breaks a few months from now. I just needed for a very specific class.
Can you see how different my situation is from that of someone who’s looking into buying a refurbished Apple Pencil?
Trust me when I say it, buy a new one. If you click the image below it will take you to Amazon and you will have multiple options of Apple Pencils and prices.
Why a refurbished Apple Pencil breaks so easily?
Have you ever seen how many tiny components rest inside that little plastic casing that the Apple Pencil is made of?
By dropping one of these pencils on the floor, it’s nearly impossible to avoid some sort of damage, even if it’s small and can’t be noticed at first.
Once you get a refurbished product, you have no clue about how many times it was dropped and what kind of issues the recurring damage will bring over time.
While the Apple Pencil may seem to be working perfectly well at first, absolutely nothing guarantees its integrity later on.
On top of that, many refurbished products do not carry the regular guarantee periods that you get when you buy your device from a licensed store.
Can you imagine how would you feel to save a tiny amount of money only to find out, days later, that your product simply doesn’t work the way it should?
Don’t be cheap. When buying hardware, make sure to get the best possible product. You already know this. You like high-quality electronics and this is precisely why you decided to go for a device designed by Apple instead of the other dozen companies that compose the tablet market.
Why Apple products tend to work better than others?
Apple has a long-lasting reputation of holding extremely high standards. They hardly let their mistakes find their way into their customers homes. I know…I know….it has happened in the past, but it’s extremely rare.
Due to the fact that Apple is so careful with their research and development, everything they make works substantially better than anything else created by their rivals.
Once you open the box of any Apple product you know that you’re getting a state-of-the-art device that will be reliable for a long time.
When you go for a refurbished version of any of those products, you’re simply giving up all of that care that Apple has put into developing that product. You’re not longer sure about what you will be getting and you won’t be able to complain either.
Conclusion
Although buying a refurbished Apple Pencil does not mean that you will get a bad deal, it would be much smarter from your part to buy a completely new one.
Saving a few dollars is not a good enough reason to accept the risk of purchasing a faulty device. The Apple Pencil is a crucial part of the tablet and you need it to work in case you want to get anything done.
One more thing, if you want to know more about input devices like drawing tablets and digital pens, make sure to check the front page of the website. I write a lot of articles about these topics and you will certainly find useful information about how to get the best when it comes to drawing devices: everything about drawing tablets.
If you have any questions, shoot a message. I’m here to answer them.
Remember to keep on creating!
Bruno
