---
title: 'I Bought from Target "Refurbished"'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=WtV3ZJz-hIM'
video_id: 'WtV3ZJz-hIM'
date: 2026-09-27
duration_sec: 1004
channel: 'Austin Evans'
---

# I Bought from Target "Refurbished"

> Source: [I Bought from Target "Refurbished"](https://youtube.com/watch?v=WtV3ZJz-hIM)

## Summary

The video explores Target's refurbished tech offerings, testing a variety of items from earbuds to an iPad mini. The creator highlights the different refurbishment tiers, shares both successes and failures, and provides practical advice on what to buy.

### Key Points

- **Refurbishment Tiers Explained** [00:14] — Target offers three refurbishment tiers: Target Certified Refurbished (with a six-month warranty), Manufacturer Refurbished (no warranty), and Pre-Owned (cleaned items).
- **Earbuds Disaster** [02:04] — A pair of no-name wireless earbuds were uncomfortable, sounded terrible, and were a waste of $50.
- **Lenovo All-in-One Cracked** [03:50] — A Lenovo all-in-one arrived with a cracked screen due to poor packaging, despite being listed as refurbished.
- **Switch Lite Success** [05:44] — A manufacturer-refurbished Nintendo Switch Lite arrived looking brand new and cost only $185, a great deal.
- **Anker Headphones Value** [07:28] — Anker Soundcore Q20i headphones, refurbished by Anker, were in great condition and cost only $26, a fantastic value.
- **iPad Mini Certified Win** [09:12] — A Target Certified Refurbished iPad mini (A17 Pro) was in excellent condition, came with a six-month warranty, and cost $450 versus the $600 MSRP.
- **Acer Monitor Deal** [11:46] — An Acer certified refurbished portable monitor worked well and cost only $36, though it required a hub for full brightness.
- **Ninja Creamy Deluxe Experiment** [13:09] — A Ninja Creamy Deluxe, manufacturer refurbished, took 20 minutes to get working but eventually produced soft serve, though it was a lot of effort.

### Conclusion

Target's refurbished section offers genuine value, but only if you're selective and stick to certified or well-known brands. The video demonstrates that while some items are duds, the savings on quality products like the iPad mini and Switch Lite make it worth the gamble.

## Transcript

Target is a fine purveyor of lots of stuff that you're going to leave in your house never touched after five minutes because you realize that it looks good on the shelf but you don't really want it. But today, we're looking at refurbished tech. Target refurbished and pre-owned, so they give you a number of categories.
Target certified refurbished, which are brand-name items refurbished by expert partners, but they do come with a six-month minimum warranty. That's actually kind of interesting. They also have manufactured refurbished, which is different, doesn't have the six-month warranty.
And then there are pre-owned, which are like new items that are cleaned. Vietool? But they spell it like the 00L. What is this, like, 2011 Leafsteak? Actually, I want to try these, but nothing says that this is refurbished.
They don't want a Ninja Creamy Deluxe Manufacturer Refurbished. Aw, but it's the, it's the not-so-deluxe one. It's Ninja Creamy Deluxe? Oh. This is Target. We're a pretend bougie. Okay, Switch Manufacturer Refurbished by 232 Inc.
What's 232 Inc.? When they say manufacturer refurbished, I take that to mean, you know, Nintendo. This is the most recent iPad mini, which is, again, certified refurbished, excellent. Also, this one's actually not bad, so it's a little portable Acer monitor.
This one is actually manufacturer refurbished from Acer. I'll put a lot more stock in that versus random company 9,000 who are just reselling nonsense. I have some questions, and the only way to answer them is to give Target a large amount of money
in exchange for goods and or services. I have total faith in Target. That makes one of us. Alrighty, my friends, let's take a look and see what we got from Target. First up is an item that I'm not entirely convinced is refurbished in any way whatsoever.
At least, looking at the listing, it just looks like it was brand new. Oh, yeah, of course it's brand new. Look, I mean, I guess I could be happy, but why was this one of the very first things I saw in the freaking refurbished section? So this is the NSB-16.
None of those numbers or letters was what I bought. It's wireless. And they spelled it wireless twice. All right. The quote-unquote original price for this was $300. Is it all right?
Every part of this is just a lie? Oh, my God. It actually does say enjoy life with music on it. Oh, that's so cringe. That's so cringe. They don't feel also cheapy. Ooh. I mean, hang on.
Wait. I thought this was a good thing. Can you just level set me real quick? How much do we pay for these? They paid $50. Yeah, never mind. I take it back. I was like, oh, $20 is not bad. Do these look okay on camera? Oh, wait. What the? I understand that this part of my ear is open, but all the pressure is purely right here.
That's terrible. Like, I was just giving me a headache for like five minutes. And I forgot, we also have the mic. He's the mic. Whoa. Look at the RGB. Let's give this thing a try.
Oh. Oh, God. That's offensive. This sounds like AM radio. I'm always slightly exaggerating. Open back headphones do tend to struggle a little bit with the bass response
because you don't have, like, the feel. But this is not like, oh, it's not got a lot of bass. There is none. They sound bad. They're incredibly uncomfortable. These are truly, actually terrible.
Get out of here. Out of here. Okay. This is an item that I think we got a good deal on. This should be a Lenovo that we bought. And what was weird about this was, we were looking through and we found this for like $200 or whatever.
But then before I bought it, I was like searching it again. And I found the exact same listing for like significantly less. Did we pay $350 for this or something? $378. Same seller, same item. And it was like $50 or $60 less.
Alrighty then. A lot of padding. Excuse me. Can you get to know that? Can you see? I don't know if I can tell you about it. Can you see?
Can you see this? Does that look like a nice and even thing? Uh oh. Oh no. Oh no. You might say that got a little punched up. Maybe, just maybe, you should have foam
instead of just you know air package to package your big and heavy all in one This video is not optional it fit to start What do I do now Oh yeah that definitely not manufactured What is this
disgusting weird little mouse? That's a Yololo mouse. Shipped in by By Refurbished and they claim that this is in excellent condition. Oh maybe it was before this happens. Oh it does work! Yeah! Nice! There we go, that's a thumbnail right there.
Oh, that's real bad. Um, well that's terrible. Hey Target, this ain't looking too hot. Alright, I think it is time to lighten the mood. Most of mine, because I'm a grumpy boy.
I'm a grumpy boy. What makes me happier than anything on this beautiful green earth? Hmm. I'm going to guess your kids. They're up there. They're up there for sure.
This is, in fact, the greatest console ever made by human hands. Oh, my God. Is there a vector in there? A Nintendo Switch Lite. That's not even top ten.
I have finally stepped off of the Switch Lite train. the Switch 2 is just better, and I get it. Everything is huge these days. Not everyone needs a damn 7, 8, or 9-inch console
when 5 inches is plenty enough, and it's nice and portable. Oh, good for life. Now, this was refurbished from one of the third parties, right? No, this is actually a manufacturer-refurbished item.
Okay, Switch, manufacturer-refurbished. By 232 Inc. What's 232 Inc.? I hope that they got it manufactured for a purpose? Sooo drugger, that's a, that's a brand new switch.
You can look at like the actual plastic on the buttons, which can get a little yellow over time. Even like the plastic, you can almost hear it. We'll fire it up, make sure it actually works, but this looks actually like a brand new switch light. Okay, feeling better.
That was a rough start. I mean, this should be a surprise as all this seems to be firing up no problem. Look at that. Now I'll say, now that you've seen it, it's a turquoise. But if you've watched the channel for a minute, you know that I have a real sick, perverted love.
This is my favorite kind for the Switch Lite. I would also say, it's quite moddable. A little while ago, we did a video where we took a beat-up old Switch Lite, and we shell-swapped it. We put an actual OLED in.
If I was going to knock the Switch Lite, I would say that, obviously, I'm not going to be able to play Switch 2 games. The screen on this, even though I like the size, isn't great. It's fine. This thing used to be $200. The MSRP now is, I think, $230.
But I'll tell you, we paid less than $230 for this brand new itch. Itch. Quick light. We paid $185. That's pretty good. Man, you know what to do with $45?
I won't tell you. But I can tell you that I got $45 extra dollars in my pocket if you ignore all the money that I just let on fire with the relative broken or dumb terrible bad items. Thumbs up. So now that we are officially so back.
Let's keep the ball rolling, my friend. So this should be one of our manufactured refurbished items. Theoretically, hopefully. These have not been super accurate. So it is in original Soundcore packaging.
Okay, that's good. I will say, this is sold and shipped by Anker. I guess if it's them doing the refurbishing, they just have the original boxes sitting around. So this is the Q20i, which are wireless noise-canceling headphones.
These are brand new, like $70. You have to try to keep your expectations in check. Oh, and this, yeah, this looks brand new, man. Smells clean. So these have some minor scuffs on the plastic here.
But scuffs like that bother you, then I don't know that you're watching the right video right now. So we got all the bad stuff out of the way first. Yay! Now we're hitting everything good. Yeah, yeah, that's the way, I planned it like that. You know what?
They actually look pretty comfy. Those are some, they're almost like those ear cups are almost too soft. They look kind of decent. Yeah. This is transparency mode It doesn sound very good but I guess it better than nothing Are you canceling on I mean it probably what you expect with headphones The real test is how they sound They don sound incredible right The way we describe them is generally
pretty passable. They're not the clearest things in the world. There's a little bit of muddiness. For $70, perfectly reasonable. They're built well enough. I think they actually look pretty decent, but these were not purchased brand new at MSRP. We bought them
refurbished for the low low price of $26. Yes, that might actually be one of our best actual deals.
For less than $30? Brother! Oh, uh oh. Uh oh. Oh my god, is that the Target logo? Is this in fact, actually, honestly,
an item that Target sold and didn't just put on a marketplace for some random seller? So this is an iPad that we purchased and this is Target refurbished, right? Yes, this is Target certified refurbished. Oh, okay, I feel much better.
The iPad's not rolling around, it's the cable underneath it. Your device is covered by a six-month warranty from the day of purchase. So that is one of the things that sets Target certified refurbished apart. And this is the most, as recorded video, may not be true for long,
the most up-to-date version of the iPad mini. This is the one that has the newer chip and supports Apple intelligence and whatnot. I'll say this looks to be in fantastic condition. That makes sense because on top of the being Target certified we got the excellent Target certified. Now the
one problem I will say that this iPad has is the screen is very jelly. It's not unusable but you should see the jelly scrolling. The other thing about this is that the
iPad mini has actually gone up. Originally the iPad mini cost 500 bucks. MSRP if I want to buy one now is $600 right? Correct. I have dabbled many times in using the
iPad mini as like a little laptop. It's so tiny and first you get one of these things out there with like 5G. If you put a keyboard on an iPad I want to use that iPad like an actual laptop but if there's no keyboard attached and you're just using it as a touch display it really does make
a lot more sense. I'm just like man I just want to go back to using it and then I like get frustrated again and this is uh yeah in 817 pro now can we check the battery on that no right for ipads you actually couldn't for a long time but new ipads do let you do it i believe cycle counter 300
capacity i mean the rear camera's not whatever but the front facing camera is wide as heck look at this please don't use an ipad camera to take a photo of anything you're trying to tell me that i shouldn't whip it out at the grain can whip the ipad out at the grain can and take photos
My nose is almost touching the screen again. It's still in frame. How much did we pay for our Apple iPad mini with an A17 Pro processor? We paid $450.
I think that's okay. Based on the condition that it's in, we're good. It's fantastic. But this is life new. I mean, this is the ideal scenario. I think we did pretty good here.
I think we're doing pretty good here. Next up, we have what should be another item that is professionally refurbished. None of this like, parent party. This came directly from Acer, did it not? It did, yep. So this should be, as I find a bunch of cables, a portable monitor.
So this is one of their portable USB-C monitors, which is, I'm just realizing this is way bigger than a spot. You can see here, this has a sticker on it, that it has been Acer recertified. Dude, it literally looks like someone decapitated a laptop.
So it has a little origami stand, so you can... do it like this. No, like this. No. Uh-huh. Nope. Not for that. It's not a bit. I don't understand.
Oh, I did it. Yeah. No. Oh, that's actually a dumb stand. I don't like that. So you just, there's not like a proper fold. Let's plug it into an iPad. So the iPad mini does support like actual like proper like video out. Hey, it works.
So typically with these USB-C monitors, you can plug them into power and you probably should. But they do pull both video as well as power from your device You trying to tell me that shouldn flip it out at the grand cancel with the iPad Okay wait wait wait So the problem I having is that the brightness is stuck at 30
because the iPad's not kicking that power out. But if I plugged it in via hub, it would get brighter. Looks like it's what, like 1080p, 60Hz? Yep. This might not sound exciting, but the reason I picked it up is as an Acer certified refurbished product, we paid $36.
Right? That's pretty good. That's also pretty good. Maybe it's actually not quite worth a hundred bucks. It's still probably worth an $80 display or something. I'm feeling greedy. Somebody. Got me.
Is it time? Oh, brother, it's time. Yay! So, I want to say this for the record. This is Alex's idea. So, this is the Ninja Queen of Lux.
Swirl. Swirl. basically today's the idea of making my own software at home sounds like a great idea until I realized Baxter and Robbins exist so I can just go there oh but you can make your own stuff so like you know if you
want it's not an appeal oh yeah that's so big this is one of those things where it's labeled as manufacturer refurbished but it is sold by each camera I might not be a big fan of reading
the instructions but in this case Alex would you mind following the instructions and reading the rules and setting this up for me okay sure Welcome to Cooking with Austin. I'm your host, Austin.
Today, I'm going to tell you how to cook ice cream. With the ingredients that I also purchased from Target to stay on brand. I almost bought powdered sugar and I didn't do it. I mean, technically we could have done it. We would have gone to jail. You subscribed to Consumption with Austin, right? We're not like a disease in like 1700.
We're going to go with three ounces. Three ounces of sugar. That's a bit much. That's a bit much. Okay, stop making fun of me, friend.
Oh, well, 7.5 ounces is like a... Oh, my God. Sure. Like a... Like a... Oh, okay. You know what? Sure. I'll see you tomorrow, my friends. Once this concoction is ready to go.
Why did you do that for real? Why did you do that for real? All righty. Who wants ice cream? Me! I do! Me! Me! I do! So this has been frozen for a solid 24 hours.
It like lifts up into... Oh, that's bad. Yeah. It's blinking install. What did I not install right? Maybe I'm learning why this is potentially refurbished. Oh, this is refurbished.
What if I use my finger and just twist it really hard? What part of anything was working before? I just want some ice cream. Is that too much to ask for? So we just spent a solid 20 minutes trying to get this to work.
All right, it worked, I think. What? What? I mean, I was ready. Like, oh, it's going. Yeah. That is loud. It's all white.
Hello, kettle. I guess we'll see you in four minutes. See you in four minutes. Finally, it is time to eat some soft serve. If we had a non-swirly, I'd eat this bad boy right here in front of you.
But, in fact, we have the whole second part, the swirly part. It's coming. Wait, stop, stop, stop.
You're using up the whole jar. You know. That tastes so good. It is wonderful.
It's wonderful, I guess. It takes a lot of work, and you can also just buy ice cream. However, if you don't want to be one of those normal people who buy ice cream and don't get it from the stores, then you should, I don't know, buy some refurbished tech on Target.
Thank you very much for watching. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and ring that ding-a-ling button, and stay tuned. You never know when you'll see me menacing an ice cream establishment in you. Ah, that's right, grease! Ow! Ow!