Buying a Used or Refurbished Laptop: What to Check (With Checklist)

• No locks. No BIOS or firmware password, no Mac Activation Lock, and no company device management screen after a reset. Any of these can make the laptop unusable for you.
• Battery wear. On Windows, run powercfg /batteryreport and compare Full Charge Capacity with Design Capacity. On a MacBook, check the cycle count; Apple rates recent MacBooks at 1,000 cycles.
• Windows is activated. Settings > System > Activation should say Windows is activated.
• Drive health. Windows 11 shows SSD health and estimated remaining life for NVMe drives in Settings; a free SMART tool covers other drives.
• Warranty and returns. “Refurbished” and grades like A, B or C are not one industry standard. Read what the seller’s grade means and how long the warranty lasts.

BIOS or firmware password. Restart and press the setup key shown at startup (often F2, F10, F12 or Delete). If it asks for a supervisor or administrator password before showing settings, ask the seller to remove it. On many business laptops this password cannot be reset by the owner without the manufacturer, and it can block booting from USB, reinstalling Windows or changing the boot drive.

Company device management. Ex-office laptops are common on the used market. Reset the laptop (Settings > System > Recovery > Reset this PC) and go through setup. If it shows an organization’s name or insists on a work or school account, it is still enrolled in that company’s device management and the company can lock or wipe it. A MacBook that shows a screen saying the Mac will be managed by an organization during setup has the same problem. Only the original organization can release it.

Mac Activation Lock. On Macs with Apple silicon or the T2 security chip, Activation Lock links the Mac to the owner’s Apple Account through Find My, and Apple says it stays on even if the Mac is erased. Have the seller sign out of their Apple Account, turn off Find My and erase the Mac in front of you. When setup starts without asking for their Apple Account, it is clear.

Windows laptops. Open Command Prompt and run powercfg /batteryreport. It saves an HTML report (the path is shown in the window) with the battery’s Design Capacity, its current Full Charge Capacity and, on most laptops, a Cycle Count. Divide full charge by design capacity to get remaining health; 80% or more is good for a used laptop, and much less than that means shorter battery life and a likely battery replacement.

MacBooks. Hold the Option key, open the Apple menu > System Information > Power, and read the Cycle Count. Apple’s cycle count table lists 1,000 cycles for recent MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models (older models are lower, such as 300 or 500), and says batteries are designed to keep up to 80% of their original capacity at that count. System Settings > Battery also shows a battery condition and maximum capacity on recent macOS versions.

A swollen battery is a safety problem, not just a wear issue. If the trackpad bulges, the bottom case does not sit flat or the keyboard deck lifts, do not buy it. If a laptop will not charge at all, our laptop not charging guide covers the usual causes.

Go to Settings > System > Activation. You want to see that Windows is activated, ideally with a digital license. A watermark saying “Activate Windows” or a message that the product key is invalid means you may need to buy a license. Very cheap keys sold separately are a common problem; a genuine refurbisher installs a properly licensed copy.

Check the Windows version as well (Settings > System > About). A laptop still on Windows 10 has stopped getting regular security updates; see our Windows 10 end of support guide and check whether the hardware can run Windows 11 before you buy. A fresh, clean install with no previous owner’s accounts or software is what you should expect from a refurbished laptop.

On Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes, select the drive and choose Properties. For NVMe SSDs, Microsoft shows estimated remaining life, available spare and temperature, based on the manufacturer’s own estimate. Windows only monitors NVMe SSDs here; for SATA SSDs and hard drives, a free SMART tool such as CrystalDiskInfo shows a health rating and total data written.

Also check the size matches the listing (Settings > System > Storage) and that it is an SSD, not a spinning hard drive, which makes any laptop feel slow. If you plan to upgrade the drive later, our guide to cloning a drive to an SSD shows how.

“Refurbished”, “renewed” and “Grade A/B/C” are seller labels, not one legal or industry standard. One seller’s Grade A might allow light scratches; another’s might mean like new. Before you buy, read the seller’s own grading page and look for three things in writing: what was tested or replaced (especially the battery), how long the warranty lasts and who honors it, and the return window.

Manufacturer refurbished programs usually give the strongest terms. Apple, for example, says its Certified Refurbished products go through full functional testing and come with Apple’s standard one-year limited warranty. Private sales usually have no warranty at all, so your own checks matter more.

Even if the seller reset it, do your own reset or clean install so you know nothing from the previous owner is left. Run all updates, set up your own accounts and back up from day one; our backup guide walks through it. If you would rather have someone set it up with you, our Computer & Device Help team does fixed-price new computer setup and file transfer in a screen sharing session that you start and watch, with a full refund if it is not fixed.