Review of my refurbished Lenovo x240 laptop

I’ve produced general content in the past around the advantages and disadvantages of considering refurbished computers and laptops because I’d seen more negative comments around refurbished computers than positive ones.

This article isn’t for me to revisit and highlight my thoughts around that again, rather it’s to give a real-world example of where a refurbished laptop was the recommended solution for a given scenario.

The scenario in question was for me! Around eighteen months ago I was in the market for a decent laptop which would be used mainly for site visits to see customers, and for some remote working tasks at the office. It could basically be my travel companion and my device of choice for troubleshooting and diagnosing networking problems.

Given it would travel with me a fair bit, I need it to be small, light but also important because of the nature of some of my work – I needed it to have an Ethernet network connection in it (as many need laptops don’t). I wasn’t so fussed on the spec, as much of what I do is Cloud-based, an i3 processor upwards would suffice, along with 4-8GB of RAM.

Given it wouldn’t be my main device, and it would be thrown around between the office, the car and customer sites, it just didn’t make sense for me to spend “big bucks” on the device. With the high possibility of me potentially breaking it and given it wouldn’t be used all the time, it made perfect sense to see what I could find in the refurbished space.

Having shopped around (we have three/four really reliable and proven suppliers who help us with this), I landed on the superb Lenovo x240 ThinkPad. Whilst it was a refurb, it was in mint condition – almost new in fact. It ticked the boxes for me as it’s small, light, has great battery life and the spec was decent too – an i5 (older generation, it is refurb after all!), with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. It was already licensed and running Windows 10 and had the Ethernet port I desired. Given it’s a ThinkPad, the build quality is amazing. It will easily withstand my heavy-handed approach and should be fine taking the odd bump along the way. This little bundle of joy was mine for around £250 – a bargain. I then proceeded to add in additional 4GB of RAM to take it up to 8GB, and I replaced the standard hard drive with an Ultra-Fast SSD Hard Drive. This gave me a quick machine, which was relatively cheap, and met all of my key requirements. It also came with twelve months warranty as well – which is the same as most new computers.

I’m still using, and loving the little x240 to this day – it really is a fantastic machine. I absolutely love it, I have nothing bad to say about it all. One further thing to add whilst it pops into my head is that the keyboard is also fantastic (for someone who spends a lot of time typing away) with a nice feel and response to your keypress.

So there we go – I don’t just say these things for fun, all the advice I put out is based around what I’m actually doing for myself or my business. Go forth, consider refurbished, it always be the right fit, but could well save you some money.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, an IT Support and Cloud Solutions business based in Redditch, Worcestershire. He just loves a good quality refurb!