OEM Certified Refurbished: The Price Baseline
Driving Roy Batty...
Key Findings: Apple Certified Refurbished is closer to marketplace pricing than expected, particularly in the UK where it undercuts Back Market Premium on some Pro configurations. Samsung's Certified Renewed launched across four markets but a new S25 from a UK retailer is cheaper than Samsung's own refurbished price. OEM entry into certified refurbished creates direct channel conflict for marketplace operators competing for the 63% of buyers who prefer pristine condition.
Researching the ever changing nature of inventory on the multiple Apple store sites, Back Market sites across Europe and the US and, willing there to be some change in the newly launched Samsung Certified Renewed sites (there wasn’t), felt like a thankless task. Models would appear then disappear, then reappear with a different price, or in Samsung’s case never appear at all until the last gasp. Whilst that might be the nature of fast moving inventory, it all reminded me of that classic Blade Runner line from Rutger Hauer’s replicant: All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Truly. No dying here though. Well, at least not before this article hits you in the Substack.
Given the market indicators appear to be validating my general and connected narratives of extending lifecycles, resulting in flat to declining new device sales leading to greater OEM participation in the secondary market1 and ultimately market consolidation amongst the supply chain, it felt like an appropriate time to lay down a baseline on the state of OEM certified device pricing. I’ve stuck to phones, but, if there’s any interest, I’m open to widening the coverage to the tablets and the laptops that sit in the same certified OEM programmes. The data was collected between 02/02/2026 and 03/02/2026. Let’s get to it…
A Variable Pricing Gap
Until I started looking for a refurb device before Christmas2, I’d assumed that an OEM certified refurbished option would be way ahead in the price charts. I’d assumed a premium associated with the brand for which I would be unable to justify the product features over and above that of a high-quality grade from a marketplace. My assumption began to look misplaced when I spotted a listing on a UK marketplace for a “pristine” iPhone 15 128GB which was 11% more expensive than Apple’s own certified refurbished option.
On the face of it, and certainly for the general consumer, grading and pricing across the market have become incoherent at best and chaotic at worst. In the sample for this article, an Apple Certified iPhone 15 Pro 256GB is £759 vs a Back Market premium (“BM-P”) grade device at £819. Apple is £60 cheaper. However, at 512GB, for the iPhone 15 Pro, the BM-P grade device is £92 cheaper at £837 than Apple’s £929, and for the 512GB Pro Max model, the BM-P price is £147 cheaper than Apple. At the 1TB mark, it all gets a bit messy. The iPhone 15 Pro will set you back £1,099 at Apple, £100 more than the only available BM-P device. And finally, the 1TB version of the Pro Max is £1,189 at Apple which will set you back £968 for a BM-P Blue Titanium or a full £1,500 for the White Titanium version. Probably easier to follow all of that in the table below and note the BM-P pricing excludes their QA fee.
But whilst the pricing gap in the UK was far narrower than I first thought, it’s not the same elsewhere.
What the Premium Buys You
The average difference between Apple’s Certified Refurbished offer and Back Market’s premium offer is just under £40 across the sample range. Admittedly, that’s a bit simplistic, but the narrower the gap, the more likely the customer is to investigate the proposition differences. What are customers actually paying for?
Apple’s Certified specification includes a new battery, a new outer shell, genuine parts and a 1-year Apple warranty all wrapped up in some retail-style packaging. Compare that to the Back Market Premium spec that offers a minimum 90% battery guarantee, flawless cosmetics, Apple parts, a 12-month seller warranty (24-months in Spain & Portugal) and a 30-day cooling off period.
The battery maths alone might prompt the consumer to seriously consider a certified option. An Apple battery replacement is £99 out of warranty. The trade-off is whether a refurbished or secondhand device at minimum 80% or in BM-P’s case 90%, might need replacing within the ownership period. As lifecycles extend, that might be necessary. In BM-P’s case, if the battery drops below 90% within the first 30 days, the buyer is entitled to a repair. After that first month and for the remaining 11 months, the threshold drops to 80%. So the 90% commitment is effectively a 30-day guarantee, but from month two onwards, the buyer's protection is the same 80% floor that applies to every other grade on the platform. Of course, battery degradation is a highly personal function and the warranty protection on it is not as straightforward as the headline figure implies. The point is that £99 closes or eliminates any price advantage BM-P holds at most storage tiers.
Back Market's own help centre confirms that its grading system refers to cosmetic appearance. Every device is guaranteed 100% functional regardless of grade. Premium adds genuine manufacturer parts and a higher battery floor, but the system itself is cosmetic first. Apple Certified removes this ambiguity entirely; the battery is new, the shell is new, the parts are genuine, and none of that requires interpretation. With BM-P, two sellers listing the same device at Premium grade meet the same appearance standard, but the buyer has no visibility into which seller fulfilled their order or what internal condition choices that seller made. Readers of the Caveat Emptor article will recall the £99 spread on "Excellent" condition devices across the market. Premium is a tighter specification than Excellent, but the principle holds: marketplace grading remains an imperfect proxy for product equivalence.
The warranty structure is where the comparison becomes most consequential. With Apple Certified, the manufacturer is also the refurbisher, the warranty provider, and the customer service handler. One counterparty, one balance sheet, no intermediation. With BM-P, the buyer's experience feels like dealing with a single entity because Back Market handles all customer facing interactions. But the warranty obligation sits with the third party refurbisher who prepared the device. Back Market operates an enforcement mechanism that steps in if the seller fails to perform, and by most accounts it works well, but the structural difference remains. This is intermediated warranty, not direct warranty. The buyer's recourse depends on Back Market's continued ability and willingness to enforce against the seller. With Apple, the question of enforcement simply doesn't arise.
None of this is to suggest that BM-P is a poor customer proposition. It is not. They got my business before Christmas. For many buyers, the price saving will be worth the trade offs, particularly at higher storage tiers where the gap widens. But the nominal price difference between Apple Certified and BM-P dismisses the additional value (perceived or otherwise) offered by the manufacturer. The battery gap, the warranty structure, and the grading system may erode the headline saving as consumers consider the whole offer and, at some storage tiers, Apple Certified is arguably cheaper on a like for like basis.
But this comparison only works where both options are actually available.
Continue reading for:
How Apple’s certified inventory differs dramatically across the UK, Europe and the US, and what that reveals about trade-in flows and supply constraints.
Samsung’s Certified Renewed pricing across four markets, how it compares to Back Market and why the refurbished option can cost more than new.
What OEM entry into certified refurbished means for marketplace operators, investors and the wider circular economy supply chain.