Is Reebelo a SCAM?
- I buy a lot of refurbished tech and honestly most sites are garbage. The amount of times we've purchased tech that was straight up broken and terrible condition, terrible values, like it happens all the time, but Reebelo, Reebelo might just be different. So the other day I actually got an ad for these guys. I'd never heard of them before. And when I started looking for the site, there's a lot of really promising stuff here. So you have 500,000 customers.
They do also have not only a 30 day return policy, but also a one year warranty, which is nice. And they plant a tree for every purchase. So there's a few things that I immediately like about the site. One of the reasons why I wanted to make this video.
Okay, so first of all, very clear, I can break down the carrier if it's locked or unlocked. Great. I can see storage, I see colors. I also see the conditions.
Something that they've done really well here is not only tell you about the condition, but also give you a little bit of a visualization. So this is what an acceptable iPhone would look like. If I go to good, you can see it has like fewer scratches, says the battery would be 80%.
Excellent is almost flawless. Pristine is basically perfect. And then premium. Premium shows that it is essentially like new. I like the fact that they have these little visualizations.
So you get a little bit of an idea because some companies say stuff like Eco-friendly. What does eco-friendly condition mean? It doesn't really mean much. Oh now hold on, I just tried to add something to the cart. It automatically added their two years of protection for 45 dollars. Okay, there's nothing wrong with selling me a protection plan, that's fine. It should not be automatically added to my cart.
A MacBook, okay. So we have a MacBook Air 2022 for 835 bucks in pristine condition. And then interesting, you can actually upgrade the battery.
So they actually do give you a lot of information about the battery. So this is a minimum of 80%. I could spend 24 dollars more to get a new 100% battery. You know what? These are the kind of decisions that I would love to have when I'm trying to purchase some used tech. So often you get almost no information to go off of. We can even switch between, yeah, the different sort of configurations with RAM, GPU, storage, you know, they actually have a pretty broad selection of stuff.
So not only do they have like iPads and stuff, but we have like Cuisinart ovens and Eufy robo vacs. Okay, so Z Flip 5 is from 600 dollars. Z Flip 4 is from 249 bucks. Z Flip 3 for 179 dollars. So I'm looking at this HP Victus Gaming PC. 850 dollars, it shows a Core i7-13700F.
Very competent, 16 gigs of RAM. But I click on the specs and it gives me these processor options, which is our Core i7 or Ryzen 5 or Core i5, or Core i3, or Ryzen 5. Like what, and a 3050 or 1660 Super, what am I getting? Storage, 256, 512, one terabyte.
What? Let's get to the bottom of is Reebelo really the best place to buy refurbished tech, or is it a big old scam sandwich? Up first we have what I'm sure is a fine product from the folks over Reebelo who have done nothing but deliver some high quality values for me. Okay, up first we have, yes, okay. So this should be our 2018 MacBook Air. This was in acceptable condition, right? - [Alex] Yes, it is our only acceptable condition item. - Okay, that's not bad. I mean a couple little scratches here, a little scuff here.
Pretty okay on the bottom. It looks a little, a little scuffy. If this is their definition of acceptable, it's really pretty good. So there may be some reasons why you wouldn't want to pick up a 2018 MacBook Air. We got this for a relative bargain of-- - [Alex] It was 300 and 63 dollars.
- 363 dollars. Bonjour indeed my friends. Bonjour to these great savings.
Now, I will say, while this seems like it's in pretty good shape, a little dirty but pretty good shape. A 2018 MacBook Air is a weird one because it's quite similar to newer MacBooks besides the fact it's got the butterfly keyboard, which is not gonna be great. But this is powered by an Intel processor. And as I'm sure you're aware, the time for Apple silicon is here. And Intel processors, while they're still supported for now, this system will probably only get another software update or two.
At first glance, besides the fact it's dirty, and I will say it's like a little dirtier than I think it should be. But importantly, dirt comes off, scratches, dings, dents don't. Why is the track pad like not? There's no click to the track pad. So these are the Force Touch track pads, which they've used for quite a while. And while there's no physical click when you press them, you feel like a little vibration, which is pretty much like a real click. Like it feels good.
This one has nothing to it. Now if this is working, it is actually a pretty nice little system for someone who doesn't hugely care about specs and doing like sort of heavy lifting, but just wants a MacBook that has a nice screen that's gonna last a few years. You know, for 400 bucks this would still match up decently with a new like say cheaper Windows computer. Certainly it's gonna be built better.
Dude, it's so slow. What the hell man? All right, let's wait for it to load. Okay. - It's my friend, Hi Tim. - Yeah, screen, speakers seem to be fine. I see no dead pixels or anything.
Let me see if I can adjust the track pad because that's the only thing that actually seems like it's a problem here. Oh yeah, you know what? Switching the click to firm does help a little bit. It still feels slightly off to me, but at least when I go for the firm setting, it actually does feel a little bit better. I know that these keyboards are prone to failure. This is one of the later end models that they did fix some of the issues but, I still feel like I'm faster on a butterfly keyboard than a more modern laptop.
So okay, Reebelo, if this is the bottom tier of your quality, then I got a good feeling for the rest of this video. Is what I say every time before I jinx myself with the next item. This is a factory unlocked Galaxy Z Flip 4.
So it's got a return. WiWi Wireless Returns. Okay we, wait.
My spidey senses are tingling. We bought from these guys before, but it was on another site. And if I remember right, last time their items were good. So they actually have a lot of information on this. So we have not only 256 gig, factory unlocked, shows battery health is 95%, fully functional, erase successful.
So that all sounds pretty promising. And we've got ourselves... Ooh, that bandaid color Z Flip 4. Oh gross, ew. What is this on the hinge? Is that snot, is that rubber? All right.
Ooh. Ooh, this is not a very well used Z Flip 4. What the hell? What is the hinge on this guy? First glance, no real scratches. It does not have the original screen protector on it, which I don't like to see.
All these Z Flips have screen protectors applied from the factory and this one has it taken off. So, that's not a good sign. But the screen itself underneath after they took the screen protector off does look pretty nice. - [Alex] This is supposed to be in good unlocked condition.
- Good seems to be pretty accurate. This just needs a wipe down. Like honestly, like there's nothing really wrong with it. It's just got little like bits of like grit and grime. The hinge feels decent. It's definitely been used.
Oh you know what though? It is missing one of the rubber feet, which is a really common thing. So there's these rubber feet on the bottom. So when the phone closes and makes solid contact, the foot is missing from this side.
Here's the thing, we got this Z Flip 4. Now keep in mind that this phone came out, what a year and a half ago, maybe? This was 1,000 dollars when it was new. We got this one though for 293 dollars. I mean, that's a 66% savings. I think you could make a real argument that this is a very strong value and it's in good shape too. This is a little video sample from the Z Flip 4.
Now this camera I will tell you is not great, as I'm sure you can see. But the important thing is this seems to be a very functional Z Flip. Something about using the Z Flip in camcorder mode feels so good. Like just it feels right. Let's make sure the speakers work. (cheerful chime) I am flying through the galaxy right now.
So far I'm very impressed with Reebelo. We've got two items that are just as advertised. Both I would say in basically the same condition. Very acceptable, very good. I've got no problems with the Z Flip at all.
It's an easy recommendation for something that costs less than 300 bucks. This next item is HP certified refurbished. That's some words that I like to see on a box.
Did you see the puff of smoke or whatever came out of it? Wait, is that anthrax? - [Alex] Oh my God. Why do you, why do you speak these things into existence? - Now this is an HP Victus Gaming PC. So this is like the lower end HP gaming PCs. Now because this says HP certified refurbished, I assume that this was done either through HP or they've used like their custom packaging or whatever. So it's gotta be good, right? Aw, just a little guy. Okay, so we've got ourselves some authentic HP gaming peripherals, which is mostly a really crappy mouse, but whatever.
And there we go, we got, what the, wait now hold on. What kind of language is this keyboard? Instead of escape it's echapp. Is this French? Let's take a look at our little baby HP Victus Gaming PC. - [Alex] For some reason, when you buy certain items on Reebelo. - Oh, yeah I forgot. - It won't tell you exactly what's in it.
So when you look at the specifications for this particular-- - Yep. - [Alex] Item, it kind of gives you an and or something. - Yes. Definitely not great. So let's see, we've rolled the dice on this HP Victus 15L. I mean, little hollow sounding, but that's just the way these things are.
Obviously we're talking about a very basic little gaming PC. It's got a little Victus logo. It does have a Core i5 in it, which is good. Inside we have, what the hell? Oh there we go, okay.
Inside we have, an Intel Arc? - [Alex] That wasn't even an option. (Alex laughs) - What did they do? This is a-- - Don't, don't-- - What is this? Wait. What? (Alex laughs) - What is it, it's even a little guy. Oh my god.
What is this, what is this? It doesn't even have a, oh my God. Dude, what the hell? Okay, so this is instead. Oh, look how tiny it is.
It's an Arc, I don't know, little guy. Let's see what we've got here, shall we? I'm sure it's gonna be lovely. Also, as I've been setting this thing up, can I just say, I truly hate this keyboard. Not only is it a Canadian-French layout. Ew. Also, it feels awful.
Like, I swear, and yes this is probably like a brand new keyboard, but it is so like squishy and gross, like, no thank you. So we do have a Core i5-12400. Interestingly it's not the F variant, so it does have integrated graphics, not that you're really gonna use them. We do have eight gigabytes, single DIMM of DDR4, 512 gig SSD, and we have an Intel Arc A380. Interesting, so it's not an A310, but an A380 is a still pretty weak GPU. Like we're talking about something that's, what, it's like a 75 watt TDP.
You would struggle I think to play most games at 1080p with this. And we spent 500 dollars on it? - [Alex] 500 dollars. - Well I can go on HP's site right now and buy one for 550. What do we get here? Oh wait, this is the exact same one.
HP Victus 15L. It's a Core i5-13400, so slightly newer. And it's got A380 graphics. Look in like seven seconds of Googling, there's so many other of these 15Ls that are just a better deal. The A380 though, like this is just not a powerful GPU.
And the biggest problem with this system is the price. Like at 500 dollars, it seems like a good deal if we got like an RTX card or something. But instead, we've got a very low end Arc GPU. And realistically, even though this is refurbished, it is only a little bit cheaper than buying a brand new 13th Gen Victus directly from HP.
There's no shot that this is worth it. On top of the fact that it was a Canadian build because it's got a French keyboard. And the fact that I didn't know what I was getting.
I did not, out of all the options that are there, this is worse than all of them. So, big thumbs down Reebelo. Next up we have a small misshapen box, but much like a lot of misshapen things in life, there's something that's probably lovely on the inside. Like, what if there's a subscribe button in here or a ring-a-ling of the ding-a-ling? So based on the fact that I have a third party DS charger, I think I know what this one is.
This should be our Nintendo DSi. Now I will say I do have a little bit of a special attachment for the DSI. I spent my very first YouTube paycheck buying myself a DSi and Pokemon Heart Gold. And then I traded it into GameStop because I needed money.
All right, so this is a Nintendo DSi and it's in actually okay condition. Now I, oh, oh, oh, ew. Wait, no, it's not in okay, what the hell? Wait, what condition was this in? - [Alex] We bought it in excellent condition. (Austin blows a raspberry) Excellent? The DSi has a matte finish. This looks like someone sneezed all over it and then used a bunch of sandpaper to try to grind it down.
Like there's literally like chunks that I can like peel off with like my thumbnail here. The fact that we got a black stylus is not great. No, this is not excellent at all. This is actually in, I would say maybe acceptable condition. Let's see on the inside. Oh, look at the bottom screen dude.
That's so scratched. No, no, this is not excellent. It's also starting to yellow a little bit.
Dude, can you see that bottom screen? Look how scratched that is. Now I mean, yes, because you had a stylus, that was a really common thing but, I paid a lot of money for excellent condition, right? - [Alex] Yep, we paid a whopping 110 dollars. - Ugh. Look, I love the DSi and I have some fond memories of paying like 100 dollars for a DSi when it was new. It was like 130 bucks or something.
So, yes I would love to take a photo. Funny you should ask. Wait, this has the SD card slot, right? Yeah, it does. Does it have an SD card in it?
No, it doesn't. Wow. (snapshot) Look at that beautiful photo. Oh no, oh no, the processing power of the DSi is too much for me to handle.
All right, we're gonna try Spyro on our DSi. Let's see how it works, shall we? All right, so the DSi is technically functional as far as I can tell. The touchscreen seems to be totally fine.
But here's the thing, there's no way that this is a good value, like at all. If this was actually in excellent condition, I think 110 dollars would be sort of fair. But this is in, I would say acceptable. It's functional, but cosmetically in really rough shape. I'm like, should just buy it on eBay because at least on eBay, most of the time you can actually get photos of the actual item that you are going to receive.
Let's brighten the mood a little bit, shall we? Because I found some other stuff that's probably good. We've bought stuff from SupplyTronics before. Does Reebelo sell anything? They're just a pure marketplace, aren't they? Well, let's take a look at what we've got in here. Okay, I'm sure this is gonna save the video. Okay, it's our iPhone. Now, this should be an iPhone XS.
Functionality, battery, and cosmetics all passed. Now it does have a screen protector on it, which I will peel off. Front of the screen I will say looks, there's a small scratch here, but that's fine. And there's a hairline scratch here. Not terrible though. And a couple of scratches on the side.
We are into iOS. Let's see what we've got, shall we? So battery health is 97%, that's very good, yeah. Can I ask though, how much did we pay for this pristine iPhone? - [Alex] 200 and 52 dollars. But keep in mind, that is almost 100 dollars more than excellent. - Wait, wait, wait, what? We paid 100 dollars more to go from excellent to pristine? - [Alex] Yes.
- Oh, why did I do that? Part of that money though is going toward it being a 512 gig phone. So this was like 1400 bucks when it was new? Yeah, okay. So maybe don't buy the pristine ones on Reebelo. It is quite clean, I'll give them that. It is very close to new. But when you consider that while I paid 250 dollars for this phone, I could have gotten it for well under 200 bucks, becomes a little bit more interesting.
The XS is actually kind of decent. Except that even when it was brand new, the battery sucked. And I'm sure it's not gotten any better since. It wouldn't be a refurbished video without taking a look at some refurbished AirPods. Now, I mostly do this with companies to make sure that they're not gonna sell me some fake AirPods.
Because there are a whole lot of fake AirPods out there. But I'm sure that these are nothing but authentic and legitimate. This is out of all the items I've looked at, the only one that actually looks like was shipped directly from Reebelo. I don't think I've ever gotten AirPods in the actual box before from a refurbished seller. Weird, okay so, AirPods Lightning charging case.
So these are the AirPods 3, I think. What's weird though is what is this sticker? You see the sticker on it? It's like AirPods designed by California. Like over the top of the actual label.
All right, well those definitely aren't new because you can see they're a little bit scuffed. What condition are these AirPods 3 in? - [Alex] They're supposed to be in excellent condition. - I mean, they're not bad on the outside. You can see there's a little bit of like wear, but it's not too bad. (sniffing) Yeah, smell pretty new. How much did I pay for my excellent condition AirPods third generation? - [Alex] 110 dollars.
- That's okay, well, that's okay. I mean, AirPods are very valuable. I think you should just buy other headphones for 110 dollars. That feels like an okay deal to me. Okay, we're pairing. I hear it, it's got the, (upbeat music) it's fine.
I can say nothing more than fine just because 110 dollars for AirPods is not a great deal. When you can buy these things, well, you can buy them new on sale for a little bit more than this. But there's so many other great Bluetooth earbuds that are maybe not gonna have all the AirPods special sauce. They're also gonna cost you a fraction.
Like you can get this kind of audio quality from like 30, 40 dollar earbuds. You can buy Beats, which are also owned by Apple. The Studio Buds are, I would argue better than this.
They have active noise cancellation and they're cheaper, brand new. Like, unless you really, really want AirPods, I don't think this is the move. They sound good, there's nothing wrong with what I got from Reebelo. I would say it's very, very solid condition, but like, it's just a tough sell.
Now this is an item that you may be familiar with because I've actually covered it on the channel in the past. How do you feel about Chromebooks? - [Alex] Eh. - How do you feel about gaming Chromebooks? - [Alex] What? - So this is a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook. Now, full disclosure, we did a sponsored Mystery Tech segment on this like a year and a half ago or so. And since then, the gaming Chromebook scene has been set alight by Stadia imploding.
So when I took a look at this, again, just a little over a year ago, this I think was 650 dollars. And it was actually a decent laptop with like a high refresh rate display, decent specs and everything. But obviously gaming Chromebook, a little hard to justify. This however, is now dramatically cheaper.
We got this thing for how much? - [Alex] 240 dollars. - So after about a year, this is now significantly less than half the price. And I'm gonna say that as long as this is in good shape, which hopefully it is, this is a very good laptop for 240 bucks.
Now what condition is this supposed to be in? - [Alex] It's supposed to be in excellent condition. - So very clean on the bottom. Quite clean on the top too. Let's open it up and see. There's a little scratch here, but not too bad.
And on the inside, yeah. Also not bad. So, heh. I know what you're thinking.
Austin, why would I want to spend even 240 dollars on a Chromebook? Well, let me tell you my friends, that this is not like a Chromebook that you're used to. What you're getting with this device is a large 1080p 120 hertz display. Very nice on a sub 300 dollar laptop. You're getting a Core i3. I think this has like eight gigs of RAM.
This is actually like a good Chromebook, period, that also happens to be decent for gaming with a high refresh rate display. Which is part of the reason why I actually kinda like this. It really is actually pretty good.
I mean, I'm telling you man this is, like, the keyboard is good, the track pad is good, the screen is terrific. - [Alex] Yeah it should be, because it's actually not 1080p, it's 2.5K. - This is the two, wait, this is the 2.5K display? - Yes.
- That's better than 1080p, I got that wrong, even better. - Yeah. - Optimize your gaming setup. I would love to Google. Also, is this a matte display? Oh, I forgot it has a matte display too. Well, let's play some Fortnite, shall we? So I am using GeForce Ultimate, which is supposedly able to run at 120 FPS. I'll tell you, I'm not normally a big fan of cloud gaming because the latency that's involved, the sort of the stuttering that's sort of inherent, especially when you're streaming over WiFi is always there, but there's only one platform I've ever used that actually feels like it's an acceptable experience.
And it is GeForce Now, specifically the Ultimate tier. Yes, the image quality's a little bit crunchy, mostly because I think we're actually running it a little bit of a lower bit rate. But like the responsiveness for cloud gaming, it's, nothing else touches this. I wanna say that Reebelo is worth it.
There's nothing here that's like a giant red flag or anything like, certainly not as bad as some of the other sites and some of the other sort of places that we've tried. But, as always, when you're buying refurbished tech, you need to do the math. Is this a good enough deal for you to roll the dice on? And is the platform you're buying from going to give you a good warranty, a good return policy? And Reebelo gets an okay mark here. They got pretty decent policies, the shipping was relatively quick, the items were, for the most part as advertised. There's definitely some points that they could have improved, but we got enough stuff here today that came in good enough condition that I'm willing to give them a pass. Some of the other stuff though, this ain't it.
2024-04-09 14:22
