Tech For Less: The Yelp of Tech?
45sThe hosts mock the site's negative reviews and odd products, creating an engaging and humorous hook.
▶ Play ClipAI Summary
In this video, Austin Evans and his team buy a variety of used and open-box tech items from the retailer Tech For Less, including business laptops, a server, a Kindle Scribe, headphones, a baby monitor, an Xbox 360, and a Zebra scanner. They test each item, compare prices to retail, and share their verdict on whether buying refurbished tech is worth it.
Chapters
[00:41]
Initial Finds
They spotted several Dells, a $9 SSD, a PlayStation for $519, and an Xbox 360 for $50, setting the stage for a mixed haul.
[02:30]
Business Laptops Are a Steal
A 2022 Dell Latitude with a Core i7-1185G7, originally costing almost $2,000, was bought for $253 in used-acceptable condition. These are built to a higher standard than typical $800 consumer laptops.
[04:19]
Surprisingly Good Speakers
The Latitude's speakers are among the best they've heard, comparable to a MacBook Pro, adding to the value proposition.
[05:30]
Server Bargain
They purchased a dented HP server with Xeon processors and 224GB of RAM for only $600. The RAM alone would have cost thousands, making it an incredible deal.
[09:29]
Open Box Kindle Scribe
A Kindle Scribe with premium pen was bought for $120 off MSRP, landing in the $160–200 range. The front-lit display and note-taking features worked well.
[13:11]
Headphones Value
Sony headphones with noise cancellation were purchased for $105 versus $130 MSRP. Passive isolation is strong, though active NC is subtle.
[13:24]
Baby Monitor Disappointment
An open-box baby monitor for $63 felt dated (like 2015 Samsung) and had range issues, making it one of the weaker purchases.
[17:12]
Xbox 360 Complete Set
A used Xbox 360 with Kinect, headset, and games was bought for under $80–100. Despite a finicky disc drive, the completeness made it a good deal.
[20:37]
Zebra Scanner Miss
A Point of Sale Zebra scanner was the worst item, with unclear functionality and no password, leading to a mixed conclusion.
[20:51]
Overall Impression
Tech For Less shows good attention to detail and better quality than expected, but the selection is limited and not every item is a winner.
Overall, Tech For Less offers some excellent deals on business-grade hardware and open-box items, but the selection is limited and not every purchase is a winner. For savvy buyers, refurbished enterprise gear can deliver massive savings.
Mentioned in this Video
💡 Key Takeaways
💡
Used Business Laptops Offer Great Value
A $2,000 laptop for $253 shows the massive savings potential of buying refurbished enterprise hardware.
04:47
📊
Refurbished Servers Can Be Incredibly Cheap
Paying $600 for a server with 224GB of RAM demonstrates how enterprise gear depreciates and becomes a bargain.
07:27
🔧
Open Box Items Save Significant Money
Getting $120 off a Kindle Scribe shows that open-box deals can be worthwhile if the condition is good.
09:55
💡
Not All Deals Are Good
The baby monitor was dated and had range issues, reminding buyers to research before purchasing refurbished items.
13:24
⚖️
Tech For Less Has Good Quality Control
Despite mixed results, the overall attention to detail was better than expected, making the store a viable option for used tech.
20:51Full Transcript
[00:00] doesn't it? but really? Some places show both positive and negative reviews
[00:12] prefer to show mostly negative comments. (Alex laughing) and when I opened the box and started it up,
[00:26] - [Alex] Revenge? - John is not happy. And I hate the animations on the site. What is a Naclud S15 for $382?
[00:41] Got a lot of just Dells. Just Dells. A $9 SSD? (light music)
[00:54] I love myself a PlayStation for $519. - No Switches, okay. They have an Xbox 360 for $50.
[01:07] So they have the open box, the C710s, I love this. This is not good!
[01:23] - [Alex] Mm. Mm. Like, I'm honestly trying. with Tech For Less and see
[01:36] Now, gotta be honest. about what we were able to find at Tech For Less. there actually was some pretty good stuff.
[01:48] (light music continues) from Tech For Less, right? - [Austin] This is in open package condition?
[02:02] used and acceptable condition. - Is Alienware still cool? - [Alex] Ooh. Hello, how do you do, fellow children? It's me.
[02:17] Don't answer that question. - [Alex] We paid $37. eBay or whatever,
[02:30] - [Austin] People actually buy these? (Alex laughing) - I'll take it! You know what? That's fine.
[02:44] Actually, no, no, this was a business model, wasn't it? So the Latitudes are more of the professional, but it does say it was manufactured in 2022,
[02:58] - [Alex] The base model for this costs almost two grand. Normally, these are bought by like IT departments I mean, you can feel the metal on the palm rest.
[03:13] It's bright, it looks to be fairly high resolution. - [Alex] I mean, this was in used-acceptable condition, so.
[03:25] A little scuffed, but the same kind of scuffed when their manager laid them off or something. - Please tell me.
[03:38] - [Adriana] You look like Harry Potter in his wizard robe. It's Wingardium Leviosa! So this is in fact a Core i7-1185G7,
[03:52] it has a digital shutter. that's opening and closing for the actual shutter. I think there's a pretty good argument for buying used,
[04:07] ThinkPads and Latitudes and ProBooks to a higher standard than an average $800 laptop and see how it sounds.
[04:19] - [Austin] Dude, that's 50% volume? Oh, my God! These are some of the best laptop speakers This is, like, up there with like a MacBook Pro or something.
[04:34] Not the world's most powerful thing. but build quality is great, which looks a little bit- Nevermind.
[04:47] - Alex, this thing was at least $2,000. - [Alex] $253. why you want to go out and buy a brand-new laptop,
[05:01] and something like an M1 or an M2 MacBook At the same kind of money, this is actually the right move. They said this was in fair condition, right?
[05:15] Like, this is actually like in very good shape. that we're off to a pretty good start. So this is one of the items
[05:30] This is a HP server. They had a mention that it was, like, that I was actually okay with the fact
[05:46] So the next morning they called me And I actually talked to a real person This thing is dented. Are you okay with that?"
[06:00] The hardware itself weighs so much. They have a brand new bezel here! This is like some over-engineered like cable management arm?
[06:17] - Can someone move that Uline thing? I can hold an entire server. - [Austin] It has got Xeons of some variety.
[06:32] - [Alex] It should have been originally released in 2014. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!
[06:45] 22, 23, 24. These are 16 gig DIMMs. - [Adriana] And where is the dent?
[06:59] whatever these are, These are probably not going to be accessible. These fans might look small.
[07:12] with no drives, it was probably like $20 to $30,000. like that alone would've been expensive.
[07:27] Alex, just in RAM, (Alex laughing) What if I told you that I only paid like 600 bucks
[07:44] Right? - [Alex] We beat the system this way. Literally, the RAM works. Let me actually make sure that this thing functions,
[07:56] What? - [Austin] Him? Pierre's a sassy (beep).
[08:09] - [Matt] Shh. It's okay, baby. These are all old SSDs - I didn't.
[08:21] - [Austin] What did you do to the server? How much RAM is in this system? - So we have a total of 224 gigs of RAM in here now.
[08:33] and that had 96 gigs of RAM in it. - [Matt] Yes. - [Austin] Which sees the full (Matt laughing)
[08:47] - Now, if we want to open up Finder. - [Matt] They're all guys named Pierre. - [Matt] I needed to make sure I could transfer something.
[09:02] to slice this very loud conversation and I look forward to seeing what Pierre does in the future. Tech for Less also has open box tech.
[09:16] This is a Kindle Scribe with the premium pen. for you to like take notes and whatnot. - [Alex] They retail brand new right now
[09:29] - [Austin] Well, it's big. It's about roughly the thickness of a USB-C port. - [Alex] For like the Gen 1, stuff like that?
[09:41] so like 160 up to, like, 200. So that's kind of right in the ballpark. We basically did save 120 bucks
[09:55] presuming it ever turns on, in good shape. and I had to actually restart it twice to get it to fully set up, So this has a front-lit display,
[10:10] I actually want to see how good this is. Oh, yeah, that's actually bright. - [Adriana] Poo-poo.
[10:23] why you would buy one of these is the fact that you have the- So I write it and then lock it in.
[10:36] Yeah, so the pen, it doesn't draw at all without the pen. - It's definitely helping to kind of like smooth out Like that looks actually like I know how to write.
[10:52] You can hang it right in the art gallery Technically, we got this for $120 off of MSRP, which kind of skews the value a little bit
[11:07] on Amazon anymore new, right? - [Austin] We're on Gen 3? - [Alex] Yeah. and it is, most importantly, exactly what we asked for.
[11:20] Their iconic names. have been brought out by Sony. - PlayStation, BRAVIA, Walkman.
[11:35] to that pantheon of greats for you? - [Alex] Excuse me? I actually do daily drive
[11:48] which are my favorite, like, But they're really expensive. These things are like 350 bucks. Now, they do come in this cool, clear blue colorway,
[12:02] I mean, they have noise cancellation, - [Austin] Oh, and the whole case is transparent? even though it's a little bit of a different shape,
[12:15] Yeah, definitely not super clean. They've got, like, fingerprints on them and stuff, so. - [Alex] Oh, God. Why did you smell those?
[12:28] which all are thankfully here in the box, I mean, the passive seal is wild. When I try noise cancellation, I actually hardly hear a difference.
[12:42] so much by themselves passively. do they, like, passively isolate so much for you? (bright music)
[12:56] but normally the EQ really does help Bright actually is- To my ears sounds way better. You can't judge these compared to, you know,
[13:11] We paid a little over $100 for these - [Alex] We paid $105. - [Alex] $130 MSRP.
[13:24] Ooh! These came fine, and...I expected more. Is that a baby monitor I see?
[13:40] - I'm familiar with baby monitors. I bought several baby monitors, and tried to charge me a subscription
[13:52] - [Adriana] Dude, this is now a pitch meeting and that video just got greenlit. baby monitor screen. Yeah, because Tech for Less has no options.
[14:05] It's like a little clip. This very much feels like Samsung from like 2015. - [Alex] This product was released sometime in 2017.
[14:17] But to be fair, I will say, get one with a dedicated screen. Oh.
[14:29] Are we in a horror movie? This is straight up a horror movie. I mean, it's a baby monitor,
[14:42] So now we just have to decide who's the baby of the office? - Wah. - [Austin] (singing) Go to sleep.
[14:59] - (singing) Go to sleep, little baby. - I don't know. That's what we're finding out!
[15:14] - [Alex] Okay. - [Austin] Oh, he's out of range already. like one-and-a-half rooms away. I got you, but you're down to one bar.
[15:30] - I don't like that you can see me, - [Adriana] Oh, my God. (Austin laughing)
[15:44] - Wah! - [Adriana] Can you believe we're getting paid right now? - Look at him. Look how happy he is in there.
[15:57] Oh, I forgot to unlock it. This whole having kids thing is a lot of work. - Man, nothing is installed on this.
[16:11] - [Ken] I can't even play "Cyberpunk 2077." - [Alex] So this baby monitor- - [Austin] Yeah! but we bought it open box for $63.
[16:29] He's like a room-and-a-half away. this is probably not gonna work. because if you want an ancient baby monitor,
[16:43] (Ken burps) Did he just burp? - [Alex] Do you change babies just because they burp? has actually padded things pretty well.
[16:57] I thought it was an Xbox 360 Kinect bundle. but this listing has been taken down. - [Alex] We bought a used Xbox 360 with Kinect.
[17:12] - [Austin] I mean, at this point, What does this normally run if you want to get a pretty much complete Xbox 360 setup?
[17:25] Oh, God, what is that? 80-ish? the fact that this is pretty complete and we've even got the headset. I feel like we're getting a real sense here
[17:38] I mean, all the scuffs I see on here Let me get this thing actually, like, but I think we might have done all right here.
[17:53] I mean, this seems like a functioning Xbox. Okay, everyone, stop talking. (bright music)
[18:07] I am officially a Kinectamal. No, maybe? Okay, whatever. And if it does-
[18:20] That's the sound it makes when the disc drive doesn't want to open. I swear with these older Xbox 360s,
[18:34] they, like, lose their chutzpah. They lose their ability to stick their discs out. It's doing still a calibration thing.
[18:49] Let's do 20,000 leaks. No, bad. No. No, no, no! Ah!
[19:02] if a little bit tired on the disc drive, but I'm impressed with the level of completeness. Alex, you were saying earlier
[19:15] probably in the like $80 to $100 range Well, I'm pretty sure that we paid less than that. - [Austin] I think it's a pretty good deal.
[19:27] the 250 gig 360 S, because I think that's basically the same price I'm legitimately impressed with Tech for Less.
[19:41] And admittedly, the selection of items isn't great, but... about how Tech For Less - [Alex] Oh, my God.
[19:56] Point of Sale, system. - [Austin] Some version of this. My understanding is like a barcode, QR code scanner.
[20:10] It doesn't look like it's been like abused for years and years. This one was open box, right? What's the password?
[20:25] - [Austin] I bet there's a way - [Adriana] Maybe we just break it, break it? what did we pay for our Zebra?
[20:37] - Which really leaves us with a bit of a mixed conclusion This is by far our worst item. they actually have good attention to detail,
[20:51] Certainly a lot better than I was expecting "Don't listen to all the mean Yelp reviews," subscribe to the Austin Evans channel
[21:04] It is in fact my job, to present to you tech for, less. (bright music)
