Refurbished Condition Very Good or Like New: What One Grade Up Actually Costs

The comparison only works if as little as possible varies at once. Same device, same storage, same shop, same day. That is what the iPhone 13 overview at refurbed.de looked like on 03.09.2026:

One catch I would rather not hide: model and storage match, colour doesn't. So this isn't a perfectly controlled pair, it's whatever stock happened to sit on the shelf that day. If colour is a hard requirement for you, your maths will look different.

For context, refurbed listed a new-device reference price of €784.22 for the same model on that page.

And this is where it gets more interesting than a neat table suggests.

The MacBook Air 13.6-inch M2 (2022) with 8 GB and 512 GB in Space Grey was listed in “Sehr gut” condition at €999.00 on 03.09.2026, against a stated new price of €1,849.00. A matching “Gut” version of the same configuration? Not listed that day. No price, no delta, no second table row.

Same pattern on the phone side. The 256 GB iPhone 13 in blue was available only in “Gut” condition at €325.99 on 03.09.2026, flagged as almost sold out.

That gap isn't a research failure. It is the finding. A full condition ladder for one exact configuration often doesn't exist, because inventory decides which grades are on the shelf right now. So when you read that “like new” costs X percent more, keep that in mind: on the day you actually buy, the comparison grade may not be there at all.

So what are you paying €10.79 for?

According to refurbed's own quality promise, the condition grade never affects functionality. A “Gut” device is meant to work just as reliably as a “Premium” one, at least per the page the day I checked it. The grade describes cosmetics and battery there, not the electronics, and warranty length stays the same across every grade.

Put plainly: the premium buys fewer visible marks. Nothing else. No longer warranty, no better reliability, at least not by that retailer's own account.

And that applies to refurbed specifically. Other shops use different grade names, different viewing distances, their own criteria. Back Market, for instance, grades its devices as “Excellent”, “Good”, “Fair” and “Premium”, a ladder that only partly lines up with refurbed's four tiers. Rebuy runs its own naming and its own cosmetic-and-function criteria too. A grade does not travel from one shop to the next, even when the word sounds the same. Our platform comparison of refurbished condition labels and our guide to refurbished condition grades go through what each retailer's own labels mean.

The usual assumption goes: higher grade, better battery. That's not how it works.

The minimum battery figures refurbed publishes for its condition grades are identical for smartphones in “Exzellent”, “Sehr gut” and “Gut”: at least 85 percent. Only “Premium” asks for at least 90 percent. For other device types the floor sits at 80 percent, at least at the time I last checked.

Those are classification thresholds, not a promise about the unit that lands on your doormat. A “Gut” device can sit well above the floor while a “Sehr gut” one scrapes past it. clevertronic.de, citing Stiftung Warentest, argues a cosmetically weaker device with healthy battery capacity can serve you better day to day than a flawless one with a tired battery. A device stamped only “Gut” can end up feeling as good as new in daily use, as long as the battery holds up.

What bugs me about all this: the battery figure is rarely printed as prominently as the words “very good”. Where a shop publishes it per unit, I'd look there first, before I even glance at the grade.

This piece holds the retailer constant and varies the grade. We wrote up the opposite direction separately. In our iPhone 13 price comparison across 31 offers, the condition stays fixed and the seller changes, and the spread there ran to 226 euros.

Four percent against 226 euros. I don't know whether that ratio holds for every model, but on this particular day the choice of seller mattered far more than the choice of grade.

Two side notes worth having:

• Apple's own refurbished programme has no condition grades at all. Every unit gets a new battery and a new outer shell, ships with a one-year warranty, at least per the page on the day I looked. The “which grade” question never comes up there.

• The Bavarian consumer information service advises checking exactly what a condition label means before buying, and draws a clean line between statutory Gewährleistung (12 months from a commercial seller in Germany) and a voluntary manufacturer warranty.

Both add up to the same point: a condition grade is one retailer's own invention, not a regulated standard. Keep that in mind and every percentage claim online gets easier to judge.

Four percent. For that you get fewer scratches and, by the retailer's own description, precisely nothing else. If the device is going straight into a case anyway, skip the upgrade. If it's a gift, or something you'll resell later, the ten euros might feel well spent.

What I wouldn't do again is treat the condition grade as more important than the seller's price or the battery figure. The bigger money sits there. Line up the current offers for your model side by side, on the day you actually buy. These numbers are from 3 September 2026, and they were probably only true on that day.