Electronics have lifespans. With refurbished parts, it’s hard to tell if you’re buying something that someone else whoopsie-bought and sent right back, or waited until a day before the end of the return period before sending back. And that return period might be long if they had an extended warranty through the manufacturer.

I’m generally pretty comfortable diagnosing hardware failures and isolating components, but so many electronics are a massive headache to break down and service, you often have to toss them as soon as one crucial component fails. For those, I’d rather spend a bit more and improve my chances of getting the most lifespan out of the whole.

For the Steam Deck, if I didn’t already have a good desktop PC and wanted to get into PC gaming, I would be happy to spend the full price on a new OLED. Just having it for travel and light usage around the house, I don’t mind holding out for a better price breakdown.

And this is of course also assuming that the refurbishing process is on the up-and-up. That’s not always the case