Buying a Refurbished iPhone: Model, Condition and Seller in Three Steps

Say you've settled on "iPhone 13, very good condition." Sounds like a finished decision. It isn't, because "very good" only gets a measurable meaning once the seller is fixed too.

Five percentage points of battery sounds like nothing. On its own, it probably is. The real gap sits somewhere else: one promise caps how much the phone has already been used, the other caps only how much capacity is left. Those aren't the same purchase, even though both product pages carry the same two words.

Which is why the sequence runs model, condition, seller, and not the other way round. Each step narrows the next one.

Choosing a model is less about camera comparisons than about two fairly dull questions. How long should the phone last, and what's the ceiling on price? The full generation-by-generation comparison lives in our refurbished iPhone model guide. What follows is just the rough sort by budget.

There's an environmental argument for going used, and it isn't ours: a study by Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH, commissioned by refurbed and published on 2024-04-22, puts the CO₂ saving of a refurbished iPhone 11 (64GB) against a new one at roughly 81%. That figure belongs to the study, not to us.

Under €200: the backup phone that still gets updates

This bracket lands you in the older generations and the SE family. As a spare phone, a first phone for a kid, or the thing that lives in the car, that's plenty. An iPhone SE with 64GB in the "Budget" tier goes for around €140 at asgoodasnew, as of August 2026. "Budget" at that shop means visible wear is part of the deal. So is the price.

Apple iPhone SE 64GB space grau

€200 to €300: the sweet spot, honestly

This is the interesting stretch, because it holds phones with several years of software support still ahead of them. An iPhone 12 with 128GB in the "Gut" (good) tier sat at asgoodasnew at roughly €229 in August 2026. So moving up from "Budget" to "Gut" costs you about €90, and what it mostly buys is a nicer-looking case.

Apple iPhone 12 128GB blau

€350 to €400: small, recent enough, more storage

Anyone after a compact phone has more choice in the refurbished market than in the new one, for the simple reason that small models aren't built any more. An iPhone 13 mini with 256GB in "Sehr gut" was listed at asgoodasnew at about €369 in August 2026. Double the storage, two generations newer, one tier better than the iPhone 12 above. Whether that's worth the €140 difference probably has more to do with your hand size than with the specs.

Apple iPhone 13 mini 256GB grün

How much longer can this model be repaired?

This question belongs to the model decision rather than the condition one, and buying guides skip it almost every time. Since 20 June 2025, manufacturers have been required to supply smartphone spare parts for seven years after a model stops being sold, per the German Verbraucherzentrale. What that means for you: the longer ago a model left the shelves, the more of those seven years is already spent.

A second rule from the same EU directive took effect on 31 July 2026. Choose a repair rather than a replacement inside the statutory two-year warranty, and the warranty on the repaired device stretches to three years. I think that tilts the maths slightly toward the older models, though that's my reading of it and not legal advice. The full breakdown of that warranty extension for repair-over-replacement lives in our deep dive on the EU right-to-repair rules for 2026.

Model settled. Only now does the condition question have a sensible answer. Our full breakdown of the tiers, from "like new" down to "acceptable", is in the condition grade guide. What that piece doesn't cover, and what matters here, is that a condition tier describes three completely different things, and most shops blur them together.

What a condition tier covers, and what it doesn't

Cosmetics. Battery. Function. Three layers, and one label almost never covers all three.

The cosmetic part is the easy one, because scratches are visible. Reputable sellers state the battery promise separately, usually as a percentage. Function generally isn't tiered at all: the phone works, otherwise it wouldn't be a refurbished device, it would be spare parts. So picking a tier means picking looks plus a battery floor, and not much else.

Which is quietly good news. Scratches on the back disappear behind any case. A tired battery doesn't.

Battery: why 80% on an iPhone 15 is worth more than 80% on an iPhone 13

Apple's own documentation is useful here. According to Apple, batteries in the iPhone 14 and earlier are engineered to keep 80% of their original capacity after 500 complete charge cycles. For the iPhone 15 and later, that same 80% mark sits at 1,000 cycles instead (support page accessed 27 August 2026).

Run that through. An iPhone 13 sitting at 80% has probably spent most of the cycle life it was designed around. An iPhone 15 at the same 80% is, on paper, roughly halfway. Identical number on the product page, different state inside the phone. How that battery percentage plays out for real-world battery life and performance is covered in more depth in our guide to refurbished phone battery health.

I'm not certain it works out that neatly in practice, since Apple's figure applies "under ideal conditions" and almost nobody charges a phone under ideal conditions. As a rule of thumb it still holds up: on newer models, the 80% floor is a less alarming number than it is on the older ones. At asgoodasnew, an iPhone 15 Pro with 128GB in "Sehr gut" changes hands for around €579, as of August 2026.

Apple iPhone 15 Pro 128GB Titan blau

Dropping one tier costs less than it looks

On an expensive model, the condition tier is the lever with the best return. Around €839 is what asgoodasnew wants for an iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256GB in the "Gut" tier, as of August 2026. At that shop, "Gut" means more visible wear than "Sehr gut", on a functionally identical phone.

For a flagship that's going into a case anyway, that's probably the most sensible call in the whole process. For a phone you plan to resell in two years, the maths shifts, because visible wear costs you a second time on the way out.

Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max 256GB titan schwarz

Model settled, tier settled. The last question is pure legwork: who has this exact combination in stock, and on what terms? Our full seller-by-seller comparison is here.

Compare the definition, not the label

Sounds obvious. It isn't. The table further up is the reason: two large sellers use the same words with different promises attached. Put two listings side by side and look only at model, storage and tier, and you're comparing prices for different products.

The practical fix is boring. Open the shop's condition page, find the tier printed on your listing, read the battery promise. Two minutes per seller. After that you know whether a €40 gap is a genuine discount or simply different goods.

Warranty: two years is the default, not the exception

A stubborn myth says refurbished devices automatically come with shorter cover. In Germany, commercial sellers may shorten the statutory two-year warranty to one year only through a separately agreed and clearly visible clause, per the Verbraucherzentrale. Something buried in the small print doesn't qualify. What this looks like at the major sellers is laid out in our warranty comparison across refurbished sellers.

So shortening is possible, but it has to be visible to you before you buy. If a product page says nothing about it, the statutory default applies. And a shop's voluntary guarantee sits on top of that, it doesn't replace it.

Worth checking before the buy button

The Bavarian consumer portal recommends looking for real photos of the specific unit rather than manufacturer stock images, and checking software update availability on older models (page updated 2026-06-30). Both take seconds. Both get skipped surprisingly often.

One more thing people miss: buying online from a commercial seller in the EU gives you a 14-day right of withdrawal. If the phone turns up and the condition doesn't match the tier you paid for, that isn't an argument. It's a return label.

Before buying, here's what I run through in order:

1. Model fixed, storage size included. Without the storage size, price comparisons mean nothing.
2. Rough sense of how much of the seven-year spare-parts window is left, which comes down to how long ago the model stopped selling.
3. Battery promise found as a percentage on the listing. If it isn't there, the shop's condition page has it.
4. Charge cycles checked, assuming the seller names them at all. Plenty don't, and that's information in itself.
5. That specific shop's condition definition read, rather than the definition you're carrying around in your head from somewhere else. This is the step where most comparisons quietly break.
6. Warranty length located, either on the listing or in the terms.
7. Real photos of the actual unit present? With stock images only, you know nothing about the cosmetics.

There's independent evidence that the effort pays. In its own test purchases, Stiftung Warentest saved around €230 on an iPhone 11 against the cheapest new price (issue 03/2023, purchases made October 2022 to January 2023). On a Samsung Galaxy S20 in the same test, the saving was over €300.

And you're in decent company: in a Kantar survey commissioned by Recommerce Group, fielded in January 2025 with 7,750 respondents across 13 European countries and published 2025-04-22, 55% of Europeans said they'd be willing to buy a refurbished smartphone in future.

The real work in buying one of these isn't picking the model. That part takes ten minutes. It's the two minutes per seller spent reading what their condition tier actually promises. Almost everyone skips exactly those two minutes, and that's where the bad purchases come from.

Once you've got your model and tier pinned down, put the sellers' offers side by side before committing. We don't sell anything here, we line up the prices and the terms. What you do with that is your call.